Stark beauty: in photogenic Namibia, the landscape is king

"Empty" is the word most often used to describe Namibia - so very beautiful and so very empty.

It has also been called the Land God Made in Anger and the Land of Great Drought, and while neither makes the country sound like a particularly alluring holiday destination, both are somewhat apt. In comparison to the relative lushness of its neighbours, Namibia is almost eerie in its starkness; endless dusty riverbeds; scrublands that stretch to the horizon with only a single tree as interruption; towering mounds of sand barely moving in the hot, dry wind. Everything is built to giant scale, but there are no giants here to enjoy it.

In an age of 40-storey skyscrapers, six-terminal airports and eight-lane motorways, there is something incredibly luxurious about all that space. Namibia is nearly twice the size of France but with a population of just two million people, many of whom live in the small, sun-scorched capital, Windhoek, and the knowledge that you could drive for a day in any direction and not see another human being is titillating. Or terrifying, depending on how sturdy your Land Rover is.

Many visitors choose to see Namibia by car, although there are plenty of planes that hop from camp to camp. Topographically, the country varies wildly - the imposing sand dunes of Sossusvlei in the west, the sun-blistered flatlands of the Kalahari in the east, the astonishing Fish River Canyon in the south. Then there is Swakopmund, the incongruously German beach resort set on the Skeleton Coast, the animal-filled Etosha National Park and Damaraland, the vast, rugged province in the north of the country.

It would have taken weeks that we do not have to drive the length and breadth of the country, so for our six-day trip we have decided to combine wildlife with landscape by plotting a route from Windhoek to Damaraland, followed by the Skeleton Coast and back.