Namibia Highlights in Style (15-Day Self-Drive)

Fourteen nights around Namibia, entirely independent, staying in exclusive lodges rather than standard ones, with the price quoted on application.

The accommodation is the whole distinction here. The route is the operator’s classic highlights run, but the beds are small camps and lodges tucked into private reserves rather than the larger places on the main circuit.

Windhoek opens it, with a stop at the Okahandja craft market for baskets, carvings and beadwork. The Okonjima Nature Reserve follows, a two-hundred-square-kilometre reserve on the edge of the Omboroko Mountains and home to the AfriCat Foundation, which has worked on carnivore conservation there since 1991, with guided game drives that include leopard tracking, though no sighting can be promised. The Namib Desert, Etosha and the Atlantic coast make up the rest, with exclusive camps at each stop and guided drives and nature walks with local guides along the way.

A 2×4 or 4×4 depending on the itinerary, the accommodation at the exclusive camps and lodges and the guided game drives and nature walks with local guides are all included; international flights, fuel and most meals are not. The price is given on application. The dry season from May to October is the window. Fifteen days at this standard is the comfortable version of a first Namibian trip, and the guided drives at the lodges are what lift it above a straightforward drive between hotels. No wildlife sighting can be promised anywhere on it, Okonjima’s leopards least of all, since they are wild animals in a very large reserve.