Cape Town and Namibia 2023
Deserts, Dust & A Different Kind of Distance
By Ajmal Samuel
It began, like most of my best ideas do, over coffee. I said, half-serious, that I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs—metaphorically, of course—and going for a proper ride in South Africa. A vacation, a bit of sport, maybe some time off-grid. Richard, never one to pass up an adventure (especially if it involves deserts and old maps), leaned forward and said, “Let’s get back to analogue. No more Google Maps. I know just the place.”
A few weeks later, I was strapped into my handcycle, crossing the wide, cracked surface of Verneukpan under a high Karoo sky, wondering how the hell we’d ended up here. But let me rewind.
We started in Cape Town—paragliding off Signal Hill, floating above the city like birds with a mission. My instructor, Matt Van Zyl, is a kind of flying whisperer, calm and confident, and we connected right away. From there, we dove into the sea—literally—with a spot of scuba diving in False Bay. Kelp forests, schools of fish, the cold bite of the Atlantic. A sensory overload before we pointed the vehicle north and left the familiar behind.
Brandvlei was our first real taste of the Northern Cape. Then came Verneukpan. It’s hard to describe Verneukpan without slipping into metaphor. It’s a void. A place where even your thoughts echo. The Afrikaans name means “to swindle,” and I liked the irony. Sir Malcolm Campbell had tried to break the land-speed record here in 1929. I didn’t have quite the same ambition—but something about pushing a handcycle across that infinite, flat surface stirred something deep.
That road into the pan was no joke—narrowing, unmarked, a 70km ribbon of dirt threading through absolute emptiness. The satellite signal dropped out, and with it, a small but familiar sense of control. I won’t admit to panicking, but I will say that Richard’s smug confidence in his battered paper map began to look suspiciously like madness. Still, we pressed on.
From there, it only got wilder. North into Namibia. First stop: Keetmanshoop, to see the Quiver Tree Forest and the Giant’s Playground. The trees stood like sculptures, surreal and dignified. I learned the San once hollowed out their branches to make quivers. The past is very much alive out here, just disguised as landscape.
The Giant’s Playground—now that’s a place. Dolerite boulders scattered like forgotten toys of some ancient child-god. Cycling through it felt like entering a forgotten myth. Every turn revealed a new strange formation, a new shadow to chase. The geology is millions of years old, but the feeling is immediate—like you’re walking through deep time.
But the soul of the trip, for me, was Wolwedans. Richard had talked it up, and it still managed to exceed every expectation. Set in the NamibRand, it’s one of those places that doesn’t try to impress you—it just is. The red dunes, the yawning silence, the endless space… I felt something shift. A slowing down. A reordering. I found myself taking longer pauses, listening more. Even the stars demanded attention; at night, they came so close you could almost believe you’d fall into them.
Of course, I also had a little fun. There were long stretches of open dirt roads where I couldn’t resist pushing the 4x4 a little harder than I should have. A bit of drifting, a bit of Namibian rally driving. Sometimes joy rides are just that—joy.
We moved on to Swakopmund, a strange, charming outpost of German colonial nostalgia clinging to the edge of the Atlantic. It felt like a mirage—orderly streets, old beer halls, and the cold mist of the ocean creeping in from the dunes. There, we traded cycling for quad bikes and roared across the sand like boys with nowhere better to be. It was pure fun, unfiltered.
Then came the long ride south, down the N7 to Cape Town. The scenery rolled by—raw, lonely, beautiful. This wasn’t a road trip, not in the usual sense. It was something else. Something quieter.
In the end, I realised it wasn’t the physical distance that made this journey memorable. It was the kind of internal distance—the kind that forces you to recalibrate, to strip away the noise and reconnect with the present. When you’re this far from everything, your mind has room to stretch. And that, I suppose, is what I was really after.
— Ajmal
