Etosha National Park is without doubt one of Africa’s best game reserves. It protects a vast shallow bowl of silvery sand the size of Holland – and its surrounding bush. It excels during the dry season when huge herds of animals can be seen amidst some of the most startling and photogenic safari scenery in Africa. For most of the year, these are ideal places just to sit quietly, observing and photographing game from the comfort of your car.

In the far south of Namibia, the Fish River rises in the centre of the country, before flowing south into the Orange River, on Namibia’s border with South Africa. In between, it has formed the great Fish River Canyon – the largest canyon in the southern hemisphere, and probably only second to Arizona’s Grand Canyon in terms of size.

The remote northwest of Namibia, known as Kaokoland (or the Kunene Region), is home to dramatic scenery, small populations of game and the Himba people – and beside it lies the equally remote coastline of the famous Skeleton Coast.

Outside of any national park, the huge tracts of Damaraland’s semi-desert wilderness are spectacular. This is home to the country’s famous desert-adapted elephants and black rhino, and also to a few small communities who are benefiting from the visitors who come here.

The classic desert scenery around Sesriem and Sossusvlei is legendary – enormous sand dunes with gracefully curving ridges, invariably pictured in the sharp light of dawn with a photogenic oryx or feathery acacia adjacent. Sesriem and Sossusvlei lie on the Tsauchab River, one of two large rivers (the other being the Tsondab, further north) that flow westward into the great dune field of the central Namib.