Namibia

The Namib is the oldest desert on earth and it shows - not in decay, but in the patience of the thing, dunes that shift grain by grain over millennia, colours that move from ochre to violet as the light changes angle. Sossusvlei, Deadvlei, Etosha's white salt pan: Namibia keeps producing landscapes that look like they were designed for a planet with different rules. It is vast, it is sparsely populated, and it will rearrange your sense of scale in ways that take a few days to settle.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: desert camps, gravel road routes, Himba village stays and the particular dark of a sky with no light for a hundred miles.