Planning a Namibia self-drive: Sossusvlei, Etosha, the Skeleton Coast and the Fish River

Namibia is the self-drive country. The roads are long, empty and mostly gravel, the distances are honest, and the reward is a landscape that changes completely every day: the red dunes of the Namib one morning, the white pan of Etosha a few days later, the fog and shipwrecks of the coast in between. Two weeks and a sturdy car cover the classic loop; three weeks let you add the far north or the far south.

This guide follows the loop clockwise from Windhoek: south-west to Sossusvlei and the NamibRand, north up the coast through Swakopmund and the Skeleton Coast, inland through Damaraland to Etosha, and, if there is time, the long run south to the Fish River Canyon. Each section says when it is at its best and lists the stays, from the Namibia Wildlife Resorts camps inside the parks to the private camps on the reserves. One cause runs through the desert: Elephant-Human Relations Aid, which works with the communities who share Damaraland with its desert elephants.

Inland from the coast, Damaraland is the most beautiful drive in the country: red basalt, the Brandberg, the rock engravings of Twyfelfontein, and the dry rivers, the Ugab, the Huab and the Hoanib, down which the desert-adapted elephants move. They are not a separate species, but they walk further and drink less than any other elephant, and finding them along a dry riverbed is one of Namibia's great experiences. The communities who farm along the same rivers are the people Elephant-Human Relations Aid works with.

The stays are camps in the riverbeds and lodges under the mountains, best in the dry season when the elephants are on the rivers.

Etosha is a salt pan the size of a small country with a ring of waterholes around it, and the game viewing is done by parking at a waterhole and waiting. In the dry season that wait is short: elephant, giraffe, zebra, springbok and the predators that follow them come in through the day, and the floodlit waterholes at Okaukuejo, Halali and Namutoni run through the night. Staying inside the park at the NWR resorts is the way to have the waterholes after the gates close.

August to October is the peak, hot and dry with the most animals at water. The green season turns the pan into a shallow lake with flamingos, and the west of the park, reached from Dolomite and Olifantsrus, is the quiet end.

Two long days south of Windhoek the Fish River has cut a canyon 160 kilometres long and 500 metres deep into the plateau, second only to the Grand Canyon. The viewpoints at Hobas look down into it; the hot springs at Ai-Ais sit at its southern end; the five-day hike between them is one of Southern Africa's classic walks, open in the cooler months only. It pairs with the Richtersveld across the Orange River, and with a drive out through the Kalahari or back up the coast through Luderitz.