Reviews of Damaraland (From 11 Acclaimed Safari Experts)

Expert

Emma Gregg –

UK

Visited: Multiple times

Emma is an award-winning travel writer for Rough Guides, National Geographic Traveller, Travel Africa magazine and The Independent.

Where black rhinos roam

Overall rating

4/5

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Damaraland, in west central Namibia, is one of the best places in Africa to go rhino-tracking on foot – an activity that’s not just laid on for tourists, but is a daily routine for the region’s professional rhino conservation workers. The region’s black rhino population are kept under constant surveillance as part of an ongoing drive to keep poachers out. In my experience it can be just as hard keeping up with the trackers as with the rhinos, but there’s a very good chance of being rewarded with a sighting. There’s nothing quite like seeing a rhino moving through this beautiful, arid wilderness, even if it’s just a brief, distant glimpse.

Damaraland also has beautiful semi-desert landscapes: richly-coloured slopes and plains dotted with weathered rocks and drought-resistant plants. One of the most unusual is the straggly-looking welwitschia. A surprising variety of wildlife species survive these harsh conditions, too. Desert-adapted elephants patrol the dry river beds, prospecting for water, and you may also see antelopes, giraffes, zebras, ostriches, and endemic birds.

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Expert

Anthony Ham –

AU

Visited: September-October

Anthony is a photographer and writer for travel magazines and Lonely Planet, including the guides to Kenya and Botswana & Namibia.

Damaraland: Wild Beauty

Overall rating

4/5

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Few places in Africa have surprised me in recent years quite like Damaraland. For a start, there’s the wildlife. Desert-adapted elephants, rhinos that you can track on foot, lions, spotted hyenas, zebra, giraffe, leopard…the only missing card in the Big Five pack is the buffalo. But it is the rhino that defines Damaraland, an epicentre for rhino conservation with fabulous conservancies and tented camps providing a supremely comfortable base for getting out to track this ancient species. But I’d also rank Damaraland as one of Namibia’s most beautiful corners, an astonishingly beautiful land of red sand, great, bouldered mountains that take on weird and wonderful forms, and picturesque dry watercourses. Put them all together and Damaraland surely offers one of the most dramatic backdrops for any safari anywhere on the continent. And don’t let the absence of a national park deter you – this is one of the most exciting safari destinations in the region.

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Mary Fitzpatrick –

US

Visited: Multiple times

Mary is an acclaimed travel writer and author of many Lonely Planet guidebooks, including South Africa, Tanzania, East Africa and Africa.

Amazing Rock Formations & Desert-adapted Elephants

Overall rating

4/5

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Among the first things that come to mind when I think of Damaraland are its rock formations – deep-red and ochre massifs, streaked with black, rising steeply up from the parched ground and rimmed by the twisted leaves of ancient welwitschia plants. Desert-adapted elephants roam this starkly beautiful and seemingly barren terrain, as do black rhino and desert-adapted lion – both only spotted with great luck – as well as an abundance of lizards, snakes, scorpions and other small desert creatures. In addition to its striking landscapes and unusual wildlife, Damaraland is also known for its rock art. Twyfelfontein has one of the largest collections of rock engravings anywhere in Africa, and nearby Brandberg (Burnt Mountain) also contains an impressive collection. Allow enough time to explore the rock engravings. They are often relegated to a relatively short detour, but proper exploration can easily take the better part of a day. Damaraland’s convenient location between Etosha National Park and the Skeleton Coast makes the area well suited for longer combination itineraries.

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Expert

Dale R Morris –

ZA

Visited: Winter

Dale is a multi-award-winning writer and photographer with more than 500 published magazine articles featured in magazines such as National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, Travel Africa, and CNN Travel.

Big Skies, Beautiful Landscapes, and Big Game

Overall rating

4/5

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I was driving down a dry riverbed in Damaraland when we chanced upon a small herd of desert-adapted elephants. They were all on their knees and looked a little like repentant prayers, but they weren’t praying for salvation (or maybe they were).

Water is as rare as one would expect in this desert environment, and elephants here are known to dig wells with their tusks to reach the water table below. They then stretch their trunks down into the holes and slurp up any moisture within reach.

It was a beautiful scene in a region where beautiful scenes are commonly seen.

Damaraland is home to all sorts of desert-adapted wildlife. There are black rhinos who get all the liquid sustenance they need from eating poisonous succulent plants. There are oryx who, I am told, can go their entire lives without ever having experienced a gulp of water. Some plants survive years without rain, and perhaps even more surprisingly, some people live here too.

The Himba people, with their beautiful ochre-painted skins and intricate clay-infused hairstyles, somehow manage to eke out a traditional lifestyle in a barren but serene environment that would kill less-hardy folk.

Whilst Damaraland isn’t as resplendent in wild game sightings as, say, Etosha National Park, the endless landscapes of fantastic geological formations, rocky plains, and golden grasslands, make for a captivating experience.

Spitzkop and Brandberg look as if they have been transported straight out of America’s Monument Valley.

There are plenty of rustic wilderness campsites for the self-drive crowd and a good selection of top-end lodges for those who prefer their wilderness served with a slice of comfort, coddling, and air conditioning.

The nighttime skies are phenomenal, as are the sunsets, which turn the mountains and plains into glowing hues of ochre and amber.

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Expert

Philip Briggs –

ZA

Visited: Wet season

Philip is an acclaimed travel writer and author of many guidebooks, including the Bradt guides to Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.

1 person found this review helpful.

Desert-adapted elephants and rhinos

Overall rating

4/5

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One of the absolute wildlife highlights of Namibia is the rocky and predictably arid region known as Damaraland, home to one of the world’s few populations of desert-adapted elephant, as well a local subspecies of black rhino. My first sighting of a herd of elephants marching through this unpromising terrain, below dramatic black cliffs, will stay with me forever, as will the rather bizarre sign of their tentative attempt at crossing one of the reserves normally dry watercourses after a rare flash flood. Aside from elephant and rhino, there isn’t much variety of wildlife on offer here, but the wilderness atmosphere more than compensates.

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Expert

Christopher Clark –

UK

Visited: April

Christopher is a British travel writer and has contributed to various Fodor's guidebooks and a range of travel magazines.

3 people found this review helpful.

The desert elephants of Damaraland

Overall rating

4/5

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Just south of Kaokoland, Damaraland is equally barren and a must for those who like to get off the beaten path and experience remote Namibia in all its glory. The undulating, rugged semi-desert landscapes are striking and always make me feel strangely melancholic, and the flora and fauna, though not always abundant, are fascinating.

In particular, Damaraland is known for its black rhinos and desert-dwelling elephants, though both can be hard to find. I’ll never forget the experience of tracking rhino on foot, even though we didn’t actually see any in the end – the sense of total wilderness and the big skies were enough. Seeing elephants in this environment, or any other wildlife for that matter, is equally unforgettable, in part because it seems so unexpected that anything can survive here.

Damaraland also has some of the best eco lodges and camps to be found in Namibia, and fascinating archeological sites like Spitzkoppe, both of which help make the overall safari experience about much more than just wildlife.

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Expert

Mike Unwin –

UK

Visited: November

Mike is an award-winning wildlife writer, former editor of Travel Zambia magazine and author of the Bradt Guide to Southern African Wildlife.

4 people found this review helpful.

On the rocks

Overall rating

4/5

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On a map, the region known as ‘Damaraland’ encompasses a vast chunk of northwestern Namibia. In tourist terms, however, it is generally held to be the area south of Kaokoland and north of the Namib-Naukluft. Here, the semi-desert terrain is punctuated by dry rivers, sculpted rock outcrops and the Brandberg massif, forming perhaps Namibia’s most alluring landscape. Unsurprisingly, Damaraland’s attractions are as much mineral as animal, and include the ‘organ pipe’ dolomite formations, a petrified forest and fabulous San rock art at Twyvelfontein. Large game is thin on the ground; I saw a few gemsbok and springbok, and saw the tracks of the famous ‘desert’ elephants, which sometimes wander south from Kaokoland. The smaller wildlife is fascinating, however: hiking around the spectacular volcanic inselberg of Spitzkoppe, I encountered such local specials as dassie rats, sand snakes and the endemic Herero chat. And at my campfire, with a vast canopy of stars and a background chorus of barking geckos, I enjoyed that special brand of wilderness isolation that Namibia has made all its own. What’s more, I did it all in my own humble Toyota Corolla.

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Expert

Stephen Cunliffe –

ZA

Visited: June/July

Stephen is a travel writer and avid conservationist whose work appears in prestigious magazines such as Africa Geographic and Travel Africa.

4 people found this review helpful.

Desert Elephants and Rhino

Overall rating

4/5

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Damaraland lies just to the south of Kaokaland and the region is dominated by an incredible array of geological phenomena from the impressive Brandberg Mountain to the pointed inselberg at the Spitzkoppe, while Twfelfontein is also home to arguably the most famous collection of bushman rock art. But I like coming here to search for and photograph the amazing desert-adapted elephants and black rhinos that reside in this harsh terrain. Visits during the late dry season usually prove the most fruitful as these large mammals are driven by thirst to make use of a handful of waterholes located within the region’s dry riverbeds. This makes locating and observing these usually wide-ranging behemoths considerably easier. The area is a true wilderness and to sit quietly and watch a herd of these uniquely-adapted elephants slake their thirst or munch on the spindly vegetation of this arid realm gives me an incredibly energising feeling and connection with nature. Damaraland is a place for true wilderness and elephant lovers; however, if you’re primarily after the charismatic cats then I would probably give it a skip.

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