Namibia

There are countries visited for their wildlife, others for their culture, others for their beaches. Namibia is visited for its landscapes. And what landscapes. The Namib is the world's oldest desert, 80 million years sculpting dunes reaching 300 metres high. Sossusvlei at sunrise, with golden light falling on red sand, is one of Africa's most iconic images. But Namibia is much more than dunes. Etosha is one of the continent's finest wildlife parks: a white salt pan surrounded by waterholes where animals concentrate in the dry season. Damaraland offers lunar landscapes where desert-adapted elephants and rhinos survive. The Skeleton Coast is a graveyard of shipwrecks wrapped in fog. And Fish River Canyon rivals the Grand Canyon in scale and drama. What makes Namibia unique is also how you travel it. It's one of Africa's safest countries, with well-maintained roads and infrastructure allowing hassle-free self-driving. Driving through Namibia is part of the experience: kilometres of nothing, horizons that never end, the feeling of being the only human for hundreds of kilometres.