Sossusvlei
Red dunes up to 325 metres, a clay pan of trees dead for six centuries, and a gate that decides who is on a dune before the sun
- When to go
- September 22° · 0 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€€price 4 of 5
- How many days
- 2days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Right now
Sossusvlei is a morning in the Namib desert, which is why it needs two nights: the gate at Sesriem opens at sunrise, and Deadvlei is sixty kilometres of tarmac, five of deep sand and a kilometre's walk away. Entry to the Namib-Naukluft park is €15 per person for 24 hours, plus the vehicle.
The schedule is set by the gate. The outer gate at Sesriem opens at sunrise and closes at sunset; the inner gate, for guests of the Sesriem camp and Sossus Dune Lodge inside the fence, opens an hour earlier and closes an hour later. Sleep outside and you reach the dunes with the sun already above them; sleep inside and you climb in the half-dark and watch the colour come up. The fuel pump is at Sesriem, and it is the only one before Solitaire.
The tarmac ends at the car park for ordinary vehicles, and from there to Sossusvlei is deep sand. A 4x4 with its tyres deflated gets through — a ban on self-drive 4x4s announced for the end of 2025 was postponed, and the ministry has confirmed they may carry on — while an ordinary car stays in the car park, because in the sand it gets stuck and the morning goes on digging it out. For anyone without a 4x4 the park concessionaire runs a shuttle from the car park to the end of the sand and back. From here the road to the coast goes through Solitaire, the only fuel, bakery and shop between the dunes and Walvis Bay.
Guides for Sossusvlei
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Sossusvlei in 2 days
→One morning decides the whole visit: the gate opens with the sun, Deadvlei is sixty-five kilometres away, and the…
What to see in Sossusvlei
Deadvlei
A white clay pan a kilometre's walk from the end of the sand. The Tsauchab river once flooded it and fed the camel-thorn trees; when the dunes cut the river off, the trees dried out six to seven centuries ago, and in this dryness they never rotted. Black trunks on white clay with a red dune behind is the picture you come for.
Dune 45
An eighty-metre dune right by the road, at kilometre 45 from Sesriem, which gave it its name. It is the first on the way, so at dawn it is also the busiest; for a ridge to yourself, drive on towards Sossusvlei.
Big Daddy
At about 325 metres the highest dune around Sossusvlei, above Deadvlei. You climb the ridge in the morning, with water, and come down the steep face straight onto the white pan.
The Sesriem canyon
The Tsauchab's cut four kilometres from Sesriem: about a kilometre long, up to thirty metres deep and two wide in places, with a stretch that holds water all year. The name is Afrikaans for "six thongs" — the number of rawhide straps settlers had to tie together for a bucket to reach the water.
Elim dune
A free-standing dune five kilometres past the gate, the closest to the camp. Its sunset is for those sleeping inside the fence: the outer gate closes at sunset, the inner gate an hour later.
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The sky over the Namib
The neighbouring private NamibRand reserve, which shares a hundred-kilometre boundary with Namib-Naukluft, has been an International Dark Sky Reserve since 2012. The second night here is for the Milky Way too, not only for the gate at dawn.
Stories from Sossusvlei
How it actually was when we were there, and what was worth it.
Sossusvlei at dawn: the sun by month, a dune's shadow and a balloon for the second morning
→Dawn at Sossusvlei moves by an hour and forty minutes between December and July. When the July sun is just rising, the December one is already twenty degrees above the dunes.
Two things you probably did not know
The dunes at Sossusvlei are among the tallest in the world, up to three hundred metres. The sand is red because the iron in it has oxidised over millions of years. The older the dune, the redder it is.
The dead trees at Deadvlei have stood for some nine hundred years without rotting. The air is so dry that the wood cannot decay, so they remain where they died when the river changed course.
Ready for Sossusvlei?
Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Sossusvlei — day trips or weekends.
Namibia
→A country you drive rather than visit: about four people per square kilometre, gravel roads without end, and a safari done in your own car as in Kruger — only without the fence
South Africa
→A country of long distances and reversed seasons, driven on the left throughout
Kenya
→A safari charged by the day, not by the trip — a reserve whose gate fee doubles in July, while a whole trip costs only half as much more
Chile
→A country 4,300 kilometres long and 180 wide — driest desert on earth to glacier, without a single turn
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Within reach from here: Swakopmund, Windhoek and Skeleton Coast
See how much of that actually suits you — or pin Sossusvlei if you have been.
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