Namibia Unleashed

Ten nights into the remote north of Namibia, guided, on severe off-road terrain, with the price quoted on application.

Windhoek is the start, at a game lodge near the airport. The Skeleton Coast comes first, which takes its name from what washes up on it: whale carcasses, the ribs of wooden ships and more recent wrecks, with the cold Benguela current offshore producing fog most mornings and sand dunes running down to the water. Cape Cross nearby holds one of the largest Cape fur seal colonies anywhere, and can be smelled before it is seen.

Damaraland follows, with the Brandberg massif, the highest mountain in the country, and conservation land where desert-adapted elephant and black rhino are tracked: the same species as elsewhere but living on a fraction of the water. Kaokoland comes next, which is about as remote as roads get in southern Africa, then Opuwo, where Himba women still dress and wear their hair in the traditional way and the town is the meeting point between that life and the modern one.

Bike hire is arranged directly between the rider and the rental company rather than through Ride Expeditions, and riders may bring their own; the price for the tour is quoted on application. Eleven days at this grade is a serious undertaking: deep sand, rock and corrugation, long distances between fuel and no realistic prospect of quick recovery, so real off-road experience is assumed. The dry season from May to October is the window. No wildlife sighting can be promised.