Namibia 7 Day Itinerary: Sossusvlei, Swakopmund and Etosha

Free, 1h15, in central Windhoek, right after check-in. The golden glass building was put up by a North Korean contractor and opened in 2014, where the German equestrian monument used to stand.

Three floors cover German colonisation, the Herero and Nama genocide of 1904 to 1908 and the independence war, which only ended in 1990. Start here: the rest of the trip is landscape, and this is the one place on the route that explains the country. The glass lift reaches a rooftop restaurant with the best view in town.

Free when open, 30 minutes, 100 metres from the museum. The Lutheran sandstone church with its red roof dates from 1910 and is the image that stands for Windhoek in every brochure.

The stained glass was a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II. It sits on a roundabout, so the good photo comes from the museum steps across the road.

Gardens free, 30 minutes, 250 metres from the church. The name, ink palace, was a joke by colonial civil servants about how much paper was used inside. Today it is Parliament, and the public palm garden in front is where Windhoek has lunch.

Free, 30 minutes, 3h30 from Windhoek. Solitaire is a petrol pump, a workshop and a bakery at a desert crossroads, with 1950s cars rusting in the sand.

Included in the park fee, 1 hour, 4 kilometres from the Sesriem gate and 1h30 on from Solitaire. The Tsauchab river cut a corridor a kilometre long and 30 metres deep into the rock.

You drop in on a ramp and walk the bed, between walls that narrow to two metres in places. It is the right thing for the late afternoon of arrival day, because the dunes demand a pre dawn start.

Sleep inside the Sesriem gate, at the park campsite or the Sossus Dune Lodge: the inner gate opens an hour before the outer one, and that hour is what separates photographing an empty Deadvlei from arriving with the sun high.

Included in the park fee, 1h30 with the climb, 45 kilometres of tarmac from the gate. Leave camp when the inner gate opens, around 5.45am in summer.

The dune is 170 metres and the ridge climb takes 30 to 40 minutes, with sand giving way at every step. Carry water and come down barefoot, which is faster and more fun. The lone acacia at the foot is the classic shot.

Included in the fee, 2h30 with the walk, 15 kilometres past Dune 45. The last 5 kilometres are deep sand: a real 4x4, or the park shuttle that leaves the 2x4 car park every 20 minutes.

From the car park it is a 1.1 kilometre walk to the pan. The floor is cracked white clay, the dunes around it are orange, and in the middle stand skeletons of camel thorns that died when the river changed course about 700 years ago and never rotted, because there is no moisture in the air. Be there before 9am: after that the contrast goes and the sand burns your feet.

Included in the fee, 1 hour, 2 kilometres from Deadvlei. This is the salt pan that gives the place its name, ringed by the tallest dunes in the world.

Big Daddy is 325 metres and takes 1h30 to climb in sand, which only makes sense before 8am. Anyone who climbs runs down the steep face straight into Deadvlei, which solves both at once. On the way out, the park gate closes at sunset and the late fine is real.

Free, 1 hour, 4h30 from Sesriem, much of it on gravel. The lagoon is a Ramsar site and holds up to 50,000 flamingos, greater and lesser, along with pelicans.

You can watch from the shore road, from the car, with no boat or tour. Afternoon light is better, and the water changes colour with the tide.

Free, 45 minutes, 30 kilometres north of the lagoon. Swakopmund has a German bakery, German street names and 1900s colonial houses facing the cold Atlantic of the Benguela current.

The iron jetty dates from 1912 and reaches 262 metres out to sea. Walk to the end late in the day and eat at the restaurant on the pier. The town is the trip pause: here you do laundry, refuel and sleep two nights.

About 1,800 Namibian dollars for the full day tour, 5 hours, leaving from Walvis Bay. You do not go on your own: the route runs along the beach, depends on the tide table and bogs a car easily.

The guide deflates the tyres, runs the hard sand strip and climbs the dunes that drop straight into the Atlantic, 100 metres above the surf. It is the most improbable landscape on this route, and it almost always includes lunch with sparkling wine on top of a dune.

About 140 Namibian dollars, 1 hour, in central Swakopmund. The centrepiece is a 14 tonne quartz crystal taken from a mine at Otjua. It works well for the late afternoon, when the coastal wind picks up.

About 150 Namibian dollars per person, 2 hours, 2h30 from Swakopmund. The granite peaks are 700 million years old, older than the desert around them.

The rock arch is the compulsory photo, and there are San rock paintings 2,000 to 4,000 years old on a wall minutes from the car park, reachable only with a local guide. Anyone with a spare night camps here: there is no electric light for kilometres and the sky is the best of the trip.

280 Namibian dollars per person and 50 for the car, per day, 1h30 at dusk, plus 4h30 of road from the Spitzkoppe. Enter through the Andersson gate and go straight to camp.

The Okaukuejo waterhole is floodlit all night and sits metres from the camp fence, with tiered seating. Elephant, black rhino, lion and hyena take turns without you driving anywhere. Stay until at least 10pm: the black rhino tends to arrive late.

Included in the park fee, 3 hours with stops, leaving Okaukuejo at first light. The salt pan covers 4,800 square kilometres and stays dry almost all year, which forces the wildlife onto the waterholes around its rim.

Drive slowly, waterhole to waterhole, between Okaukuejo, Halali and Namutoni: that is how you see lion, oryx, springbok and the black rhino Namibia protects better than any other country. The Etosha Lookout runs out onto the pan itself, and is the only part of the park where you may leave the car.

Included in the fee, 1h30, at the far east of the park. The white fort dates from 1903, was destroyed by Ovambo fighters the following year and rebuilt; today it is a camp and a national monument.

Climb the watchtower at sunset and look over the King Nehale waterhole just north. From here the Von Lindequist gate is 10 minutes away, and Windhoek 5 hours on the tarred B1: if your flight is in the morning, sleep at Otjiwarongo halfway.