This week’s dream: wildlife-watching on Namibia’s Skeleton Coast

Home to ancient tribal peoples and sparse but spectacular wildlife, Namibia’s vast northwestern seaboard – the Skeleton Coast – and its hinterland, the northern Namib Desert, has never been easy to reach. This year, however, the safari outfit Natural Selection has opened two new luxury lodges there, letting visitors explore some of its remoter reaches in comfort, says Horatia Harrod in the FT. Guests must first fly from the capital, Windhoek, to the isolated town of Sesfontein, in a Cessna 210, a propeller plane “fitted out like a classic car with ageing leather fittings and mock mahogany ashtrays”. Below, tarmacked roads give way to dirt tracks and then to “nothingness”, a foretaste of the “seemingly infinite” landscapes to come.

From Sesfontein, it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive along a dry riverbed to Hoanib Valley Camp, where the six “spacious” tents come kitted out with hot showers and Nespresso machines, all powered by solar energy. You may only spot one other vehicle every couple of days on safari drives as you explore canyons and plains in search of desert-adapted lions, elephants, rhinos and giraffes. The animals can be hard to track, but sightings are likely nonetheless, and the “mighty, prehistoric” landscape is a wonder in itself.

Perched on tussocky dunes by the sea, Shipwreck Lodge’s “implausibly luxurious” cabins look like children’s drawings of tugboats, with wooden ribs, portholes and black chimney stacks. All are designed to leave no trace on this hostile yet “fragile” desert littoral, a “dreamlike” place littered with the bones of whales and elephants, and the remains of ships wrecked over centuries by the swirling currents offshore. Sightings of big game are relatively uncommon here, but there are huge seal colonies, many species of birds, and an array of insects and plants to spot instead. Steppes Travel (01285-601050, www.steppestravel.com) has a 10-day trip from £5,995pp, excluding international flights.