Solo travel in Namibia

solo camping

Namibia is a safe, tourist-friendly country with excellent infrastructure despite its sparse habitation, so as a solo traveller you don’t need to worry about safety. As a solo traveller you have the option of joining an organised safari tour to travel in a group, or you can travel completely solo, hiring a car and driving yourself around.

Highlights

lion namibia

If you like to be around other travellers, then the best places to explore as a solo traveller are the most popular ones: Etosha National Park in the north and Sossusvlei and Swakopmund in central Namibia. In each of these places you’ll find camps and lodges where you can meet up with other travellers, and a host of activities on offer where you can join up with other groups. In northern Namibia, the Zambezi Region, which is popular with overlanders and backpackers, is another place where you’ll easily be able to meet up with other travellers.

Seeing lions, elephants and rhino on guided game drives in Etosha National Park, meeting new friends around the fire at a camp in the Zambezi Region, skydiving, sandboarding and drinking beer with locals in Swakopmund, soaking up the silence and timeless beauty of the desert atop a dune in the sand sea of Sossusvlei.

Practical advice

The only thing that you really need to be aware of as a solo traveller in Namibia is long driving distances in remote areas – you will often drive for hours without coming across a gas station or town. Make sure that your lodge or hotel knows to expect you in case you have a breakdown.
It’s also a good idea to tell someone where you’re going if you head off from your lodge or camp on a day hike. If possible, join up with a guided hike or find someone to hike with, as it’s much safer to hike in a pair or a group in case of an emergency.

Why is Namibia unique?

Namibia offers space, silence and the chance to really get away from it all: it’s the second least densely populated country on the planet, with only two people per square kilometre. You can drive for hours under huge blue skies without seeing another car, surrounded by landscapes so vast and empty that at times you feel like you’re on the edge of the planet. In an overpopulated world, there aren’t many places left where you can immerse yourself as deeply in remote wilderness…

Adventure activities in Namibia

Namibia spells adventure with a capital A. Planning your Namibian adventure holiday is a matter of deciding what sorts of experiences you’d like to have. Without much planning or preparation, you can have a jam-packed itinerary full of adventurous activities – some of which are suitable for the whole family – just by staying in Swakopmund, where various tour operators offer everything from skydiving and sandboarding down massive desert dunes to quad biking and ocean kayaking. …

An active holiday in Namibia

If you’re after an active holiday in Namibia, you’re in for a mind-boggling array of choices: everything from hiking, mountain biking and sand boarding to river canoeing, ocean kayaking, mountain climbing, animal tracking and quad biking. Swakopmund is an ideal base for an active holiday, as the coastal town offers a huge range of outdoors activities nearby, including sandboarding down towering dunes, skydiving over the desert, kayaking with seals in the ocean and quad…