Heat and Dust

What I remember first when I think about Etosha is the vastness, the scale, the sky’s blue dome fused with the land, the heat, the bone-dry air heavy with dust. The light bright yet diffused, the heat haze shimmering, and on the line of the horizon the blinding white sea of the salt pan. And I remember flying over this northern stretch of Namibia, and seeing the pan like a giant mirror, reflecting back the light to our aircraft 30,000 feet above.

Only then do I remember the wildlife - the herds of zebra, slogging up the dusty roads, irritable and quarrelsome in the heat; the springbok in waves flowing across the veld; the statuesque geometric beauty of gemsbok and the dour, stubborn battle of the rhinos at the Halali Camp for control of the waterhole.

It is not the variety of wildlife I recall - as these photographs show, we didn’t see much variety at all - but the landscape, and the animals as part of that landscape, following its seasons and paths. I think this is what makes Etosha unique, amongst all the game reserves that I have visited over the years - the landscape stuns you, the heat and dust fill your lungs, and into this strange and alien world, into this light and haze, you see the animals trudge.