We normally assume that an architect, an artist, a businessman wishes to create something that will outlive them, which will exist long after they are gone. Yet Stephan Brückner, the creator of the spectacular Wolwedans Lodge collection in Namibia, has quite the opposite intention.
“In 200 years,” he explains, waving his hand towards the main lodge, “there will be no evidence that thousands of people stayed here.” Continue reading
Some shots are a result of being in the right place at the right time – and this was one of them. But in getting to “the right place” required rather a lot of time, patience and knowledge. This is a desert-adapted elephant found in the bleak expanse of northwestern Namibia, and we had spent the morning tracking them, following footprints and droppings up and down dried-up riverbeds. Continue reading
But unlike the routine travel we do back home – the daily commute, the weekend trips to visit family – “travelling” can provide some truly memorable means of reaching a destination, and as the Chinese proverb says, the journey becomes the reward. Here’s a round up of my five most memorable travel experiences – some because they were terrifying, others because they were unexpected. And many were both. Continue reading
It’s appropriate that reaching the Himba involves such an arduous journey across Namibia. Arriving at the settlement, I realised life here was as far removed from my own as I could imagine, and the punishing journey was first test at leaving my comfortable, western lifestyle to enter another, more primal world, where human movements are dictated by nature, and not the other way around. Continue reading
Three days in a rickety jeep. Three sleepless, aching nights; three icy dawns with the wonder of the sun rising over the widest horizons I’d ever see, watching as my own skinny shadow stretched to the distant mountains. A world composed of salt and volcanoes and boiling water and dust, that made me ache for the sight of a green leaf, a blade of grass, a drop of rain. Life. Continue reading
A safari is normally characterised by trying to get nearer – tracking something down, pursuing it, getting the long lenses out. But a flying safari is about being just far enough away to make out the horizon beyond the mountains, to watch the coastal fog creeping up behind the dunes, to observe the earth becoming an abstract artwork of shadow and light, the known and the unknown. Continue reading
The tour introduced us to Namibia in a way that encouraged respect, admiration and a rather healthy (I believe) dose of fear. Standing within 15 meters of a notoriously grumpy black rhino named Hans Otto was a powerful experience; as was tracking radio-collared cheetah through the grasslands, only to discover that we ourselves were being tracked – by a leopard. We knew whose territory this was – and it was not ours. Continue reading
La Nomadita's Travels 