Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
6.55 pm, 21 November 2022, 32 minutes before sunset: all 10 of us – 8 “punters”, plus tour leader and nature guide/driver – are standing on the deck in front of Kulala Desert Lodge.
Individually and collectively, we are agog.
We have a 360 degree field of view.
Wherever we look, the landscape’s apparent nature is in flux – its face/s changing dramatically, second by second.
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At 5.08 pm on 21 November 2022 “our” Namib sandstorm was vanishing, as quickly as it had materialised, circa one hour earlier.
When I took the featured image, all visibly-flying sand was some kilometres east of us, as we stood on the deck of “our” cottage-tent.
Kulala Desert Lodge is around 40 kilometres east north east of Sossusvlei, and less than 2 ks from the southern edge of the Namib’s “sand sea” – the dune field in which Sossusvlei is the tourist “magnet”.
(Sossusvlei – our destination the following morning – has to be seen to be believed. It will, eventually, have its own series of posts. Suffice for now, what transpired on 21.11.2022 had a very beneficial impact on our 22.11.2022 experience)
For the next ninety minutes we relaxed in our quasi-tent’s interior; inevitably, it had been infiltrated by a generous dose of very fine, reddish sand – smoothly luxurious bedding had become decidedly gritty.
Then, suddenly, my ears and nose suggested something very unlikely was happening…
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Just before 5 pm we arrived at Kulala Desert Lodge.
At this point the sandstorm had raged for circa 45 minutes.
We rushed out of “our” vehicle, and into the Lodge’s hub/reception/lounge.
From there, the nearest of the nearby sand sea’s huge dunes is usually spectacularly evident.
At this moment, it was invisible.
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This post’s featured image comes from circa one minute after the final image in #2 of this series, but it looks in the opposite direction, toward the Namib’s temporarily-invisible sand sea.
On a normal day, the horizon in a photo taken from this vantage point would have been defined by the crests of some of the world’s most spectacular dunes.
Namibia’s emblematic mammal – the gemsbok (aka “oryx”) – is superbly adapted to its very demanding environment.(as will be detailed in at least one future post, devoted entirely to Oryx gazella)
As you can see, stoic gemsbok just “get on with it”, sandstorm notwithstanding.
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The featured photo was taken at 4.22 pm on 21 November 2022 – four minutes after the second one in #1 of this series.
The image looks across private property, once grazed by cattle, but now being “rewilded”.
Its present purpose is “conservation, funded by tourism”, as is true of much of the private land near to the Namib-Naukluft National Park – one of the world’s larger, more remarkable “protected” places.
Just one minute later, an appreciable amount of blue sky emerged, and it looked like the dust storm could be about to disappear as rapidly as it had formed…
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When I took the featured image, we were most of the way through a long drive from Swakopmund, on the Atlantic Ocean, to the Kulala Desert Lodge, conveniently near to Sossusvlei.
The dunes around Sossusvlei defy belief; inevitably, they are the “big attraction” in the Namib’s “sand sea”.
As you can see, not all of the world’s oldest desert is “sand sea”.
As you can also see, at 4.00 pm on 21 November 2022, visibility was excellent, the wind moderate.
We had no idea how rapidly/dramatically those conditions would change…
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…was an extraordinarily close one.
Prior to November 2022 I had never imagined that I would ever find myself so astonishingly near to a wild leopard, let alone that such an experience would prove the least exciting of four leopard encounters, all within a span of about ninety hours.
This post’s photos are in chronological sequence; the first three were taken within a single minute, and the final image’s “moment” occurred a whisker less seven minutes after the first.
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(see immediately-preceding post for human context)
Pictured is one of an enormous number of water lilies (not lotus) then blooming, pink, on the edges of Vembanad Lake and its backwaters.
”Pests” to rice-growers in and around Kumarakon, they have in recent years become tourism “gold”.
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Pictured above is yet another example of the most commonly-witnessed symptom/expression of our global “narcissism pandemic”.
It shows perhaps the most inane, virulent – and characteristic – form of “early 21st century” human behaviour.
Why bother to pay attention to any of the world’s wonders when you could, instead, go one worse than perpetually-peering into a mirror?
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Every day on “our” planet “our” sun seemingly rises and sets.
(unless one is within the Arctic or Antarctic “circle” in summer or winter)
On at least many days – in drier regions, most days – humans who care to pay attention can view the sun’s daily emergence and disappearance.
To those who do not care to pay them attention, such “every day” events are the very definition of ennui.
The (generally, much happier) rest of us relish the happy reality that no two sunrises/sunsets are too much alike, even in a single place.
Travelling to different locations further enhances this delicious, effectively-infinite variability.
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