Camp Sossus

Camp Sossus sits on the private, 24,000-hectare Namib Tsaris Conservancy, between the Nubib and Zaris Mountains, about 30 minutes' drive from the Sesriem gate into Sossusvlei. Six tented rooms, solar-lit with semi-open-air bathrooms and hot bucket showers, are built almost entirely from materials that would otherwise have gone to landfill: oil-drum roofs, recycled wood and metal, with stone walls angled against the prevailing east wind. Above each bathroom is a private star bed, for moonlit sleeping.

A private guide leads game drives and walks through the conservancy's gravel plains and dry river valleys, where giraffe, Hartmann's and Burchell's zebra, oryx and cheetah have returned since 2010, when conservationist Swen Bachran began pulling out 89km of internal fencing and reversing 60 years of hard farming. Trips also run out to the famous dunes of Sossusvlei and Deadvlei, with hot air balloon and light-aircraft flights over the desert too.