Damaraland With Kids: A Namibia Safari at Wilderness Doro Nawas

Damaraland was one of the places I most wanted to experience during our two weeks in Namibia. We travelled there particularly to find the desert-adapted elephants, having watched a National Geographic documentary about how these extraordinary animals survive in one of the driest environments in Africa.

We visited in April with our eight-and-a-half-year-old son, staying at Wilderness Doro Nawas. By this point, we had already seen some extraordinary landscapes in Namibia, but Damaraland was another level entirely. As we drove further into the region, the landscape changed dramatically: enormous boulders, vast expanses of dry earth and seemingly endless wilderness. The heat was intense and the sense of remoteness almost difficult to comprehend.

And yet there is life here.

That contrast between an environment that looks almost impossible to inhabit and the wildlife and communities that have adapted to live within it became the most fascinating part of our time in Damaraland, and made this a very different kind of Namibia safari.

Arriving in Damaraland

We had stopped briefly in Windhoek before travelling into Damaraland, and the drive took around four to five hours. It is a long journey, particularly with children, but watching the landscape transform was part of the experience.

Damaraland felt increasingly remote as we travelled. Huge rock formations and boulders began to dominate the landscape, with very little vegetation and almost no obvious signs of water.

The heat was also noticeable almost immediately. April was exceptionally hot during our visit, and once we reached Doro Nawas, cold cloths around our necks became one of the simplest and most welcome ways of cooling down.

But there was another side to the journey that stayed with us. Along the road, we encountered local families, including children, asking passing vehicles for water. We gave them bottles from the car.

For our son, seeing children around his own age living in such a dramatically different environment was difficult to ignore. It also gave the remoteness and scarcity of water that we had been discussing a very human context. Damaraland wasn’t simply a spectacular landscape we had come to photograph; people live within these conditions too.

Staying at Wilderness Doro Nawas

Wilderness Doro Nawas sits beautifully within this enormous landscape, and although the accommodation is luxurious and extremely comfortable, for me the reason to come here isn’t really the hotel.

It is everything around it. The lodge uses natural materials and feels connected to the landscape rather than separated from it. There is a beautiful communal area and swimming pool, but much of our time was spent either exploring or simply looking out across Damaraland.

Our room was spacious and comfortable, but its most memorable feature was something wonderfully simple: the beds could be rolled outside.

One night, we slept beneath the stars. In somewhere as remote as Damaraland, with so little surrounding light, the night sky was extraordinary. Sleeping outside with our son, looking up at the stars and listening to the sounds around us, became one of those experiences that needed very little embellishment. It was simply incredible.

Tracking Desert-Adapted Elephants in Damaraland

The principal reason we had travelled here was to see the desert-adapted elephants.

This wasn’t a conventional safari where we drove into an area with a high density of wildlife and moved from sighting to sighting. We went out specifically to track the elephants, searching through an immense landscape for animals that have adapted to survive in remarkably arid conditions.

And we found them.

For our son, who had already watched a documentary about these elephants before travelling, seeing them within the environment he had learned about was completely different from simply encountering elephants elsewhere in Africa.

He wanted to understand how they survived here. Where did they find water? How could such enormous animals live in a landscape that appeared to offer so little? How had they adapted?

We also saw giraffes and other wildlife during our time in the region, but the elephants were unquestionably the focus. This is one of the reasons I would describe Damaraland as a very different Namibia safari experience. Wildlife isn’t separated from the landscape here. Understanding the environment becomes part of understanding the animals themselves.

A Different Kind of Namibia Safari With Children

There is a tendency when planning safari with children to think primarily about how many animals they will see.

Damaraland offers something different.

The wildlife can require more searching, but that became part of the experience. Our son wasn’t simply watching an elephant; he was beginning to think about why the elephant was there at all.

The desert-adapted elephants gave us a natural way into conversations about adaptation, water, movement and conservation. Nothing needed to be turned into a lesson. The questions came because the environment made them obvious.

That is one of the aspects of travel I find most valuable during these formative years. Children encounter something sufficiently different from their normal environment that they begin asking their own questions. In Damaraland, the landscape did much of that work for us.

People and Culture in Damaraland

Our experience wasn’t limited to wildlife. We also spent time learning about the indigenous communities of the region and some of the different groups who have lived within this part of Namibia. Combined with what our son had already seen while travelling through the area, it helped him understand that adapting to this environment is not only a wildlife story.

That human dimension continued at Doro Nawas itself.

Many of the staff came from local communities, and there was a particularly strong sense of community amongst the team. They were enormously interactive with our son, showing him things, talking to him and involving him naturally in life at the lodge.

Music and dancing were also part of our stay, from our arrival to dinner and even when we left. It never felt as though our son was simply being accommodated as a child staying at an adult lodge. People engaged with him.

The food was also exceptional something I remember particularly clearly despite the experiences outside the lodge inevitably dominating our memories of Doro Nawas.

The Landscape of Damaraland

Damaraland remains, for me, one of the most beautiful parts of Namibia.

It is difficult to convey its scale in photographs. The enormous boulders, mountains, dry riverbeds and vast open spaces create a landscape that feels ancient and almost otherworldly.

Alongside Sossusvlei and the Skeleton Coast, it was one of the landscapes from our Namibia journey that affected me most.

Perhaps what makes Damaraland particularly compelling is the contradiction at its heart. It looks empty, inhospitable and extraordinarily dry. Then you begin looking more closely.

There are elephants moving through it. Giraffe appear against the landscape. People have built lives here. Wildlife has developed ways of finding water and moving enormous distances through the desert.

The apparent emptiness isn’t empty at all.

Is Damaraland Suitable for Younger Children?

I would think carefully about Damaraland with very young children. Not because children can’t enjoy it, but because reaching the region involves significant driving and the heat can be intense depending on the time of year. From Windhoek or the coast, families should expect several hours on the road.

For us, travelling with an eight-and-a-half-year-old worked extremely well. He was old enough to cope with the drives and heat, but, more importantly, old enough to become genuinely interested in what we were seeing and to understand some of the context around it.

For younger children, I would look particularly carefully at the time of year, temperatures, driving distances and daily activities before deciding whether to include Damaraland.

For families with younger children, malaria risk is another consideration: risk in Damaraland can vary by location, season and rainfall, so it should not be assumed to be malaria-free, and families should check current travel-health advice before travelling.

How Long Should You Spend in Damaraland?

I would allow two to three nights, with three being preferable if your wider Namibia itinerary allows it.

Two nights gives you time to experience Doro Nawas and search for the desert-adapted elephants, but Damaraland is somewhere where additional time creates possibilities rather than simply filling days.

We had two weeks for Namibia as a whole, and in retrospect I think three weeks would allow the country to be explored much more comfortably, particularly if you want to include some of its more remote wildlife experiences.

I would happily return to Damaraland. In particular, I would like to travel further into the remote areas where there are opportunities to search for Namibia’s desert-adapted black rhino, and eventually explore further north towards the landscapes associated with its desert-adapted lions.

Those experiences require more time and considerably more distance which is precisely why I wouldn’t try to force everything into a shorter Namibia trip.

Ancient San Rock Art at Twyfelfontein

One of the other fascinating experiences during our time in Damaraland was discovering the ancient rock art associated with the San people, among the earliest indigenous inhabitants of southern Africa. We visited the extraordinary rock engravings at Twyfelfontein, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where images carved into the rock thousands of years ago offer a remarkable glimpse into the lives of the region’s early hunter-gatherer communities.

The engravings depict animals including elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses and ostriches, alongside human and animal footprints. Some of these images are thousands of years old, and the site contains one of the largest concentrations of prehistoric rock engravings in Africa. 

For our son, it was another opportunity to understand Damaraland beyond its wildlife. We had come to see how desert-adapted elephants survive in this extraordinary environment, but here was evidence of people living within and interpreting the same landscape thousands of years earlier. Seeing these ancient carvings directly, rather than in a museum or textbook, added another dimension to our understanding of the region.

More From Our Namibia Journey

Damaraland was one part of a much wider journey through Namibia, encompassing remarkably different landscapes and wildlife experiences. You can also read about our stay at Pelican Point Lodge on the remote coastline near Walvis Bay, exploring Sossusvlei from Desert Grace, and our stay at Zannier Sonop in the Namib Desert. Each offered something completely different for our son, and together they show just how varied family travel in Namibia can be.

Planning a Family Trip to Namibia

Namibia can offer extraordinary formative value for children, but its scale, driving distances, extreme environments and very different wildlife experiences mean that the way the journey is put together matters.

Through Formative Travel™ Advisory, I design bespoke Namibia journeys around your family’s interests, your child’s age and stage, and the experiences you want the journey to offer, rather than simply assembling a sequence of hotels.

Where accommodation forms part of an itinerary, I work with established luxury travel partners, including those on the ground in Namibia, who can facilitate the bookings. For a small number of clients, I can also arrange hotel bookings through a Little Emperors, Virtuoso-aligned luxury travel service. Depending on the property, rate and availability, this may provide access to benefits such as hotel credit, room upgrades, welcome amenities and early check-in or late check-out.

Shanti

The Kensington Diary