andBeyond Sossusvlei Desert Lodge

After dark the Milky Way stretches unbroken over the gravel plains of the NamibRand Nature Reserve in southern Namibia, and andBeyond Sossusvlei Desert Lodge was rebuilt with that sky in mind. Its suites line the foot of a rocky ridge, each with a skylight above the bed. By day the view runs west across grassland and red sand towards the dunes of the Namib, with mountains closing the horizon.

History

andBeyond, which traded as Conservation Corporation Africa in its early years, has run a lodge on this site since the late 1990s, when it opened as Sossusvlei Mountain Lodge. In 2019 the company replaced the old buildings and reopened the property as Sossusvlei Desert Lodge, built new with a lighter footprint and closer attention to heat, light and the night sky.

The reserve has its own story. NamibRand was assembled from the 1980s by the businessman Albi Brückner, who bought up struggling sheep farms on the edge of the Namib and took down their internal fences so that oryx, springbok and zebra could move freely again. It now covers more than 200,000 hectares and is run as a private nature reserve on conservation lines, with only a few small tourism concessions. In 2012 the International Dark-Sky Association named NamibRand Africa's first International Dark Sky Reserve, with gold-tier status, the highest it grants.

Architecture and design

The rebuilt lodge is made of stone, steel and glass. The suites have glass fronts facing the plain, solid walls against the afternoon heat and deep overhangs for shade, and their colours are taken from the desert around them. Fireplaces warm the rooms on winter nights, when the temperature falls sharply after sunset.

The main lodge holds a lounge, a bar, a dining room, a deck and a swimming pool, and has an observatory where a guide sets up a telescope on clear nights to show guests planets, star clusters and the Magellanic Clouds.

Rooms and suites

There are ten suites, spread along the ridge so that none looks into another. Each has a bedroom with the skylight above the bed, a lounge, a bathroom with views over the plain and a deck with its own plunge pool. The Desert Villa, set apart from the rest, has two bedrooms, a living area and its own pool, and comes with a private guide and vehicle.

Dining

Meals are served in the main lodge or out on the decks, with timings built around the excursions. Breakfast is early, because the dunes are at their best in the first hours of light, and dinner comes after sunset, often followed by an hour at the telescope. The wine list draws largely on South Africa.

Location

The lodge sits in the north of NamibRand, south of Sesriem, the gate to the Sossusvlei area of the Namib-Naukluft National Park. From Sesriem a road runs west to Sossusvlei, a clay pan ringed by some of the highest dunes in the world, and to Deadvlei, where dead camel thorn trees stand on white clay against orange sand. The lodge runs guided excursions there in the early morning. The Namib Sand Sea, of which these dunes are part, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.

Closer to the lodge, guides lead nature drives and walks across the reserve, looking for oryx, springbok, ostrich, bat-eared fox and the fairy circles, bare rings in the grass whose origin scientists still argue about. Hot-air balloon flights take off over the reserve at dawn.

Most guests arrive by light aircraft from Windhoek, landing at an airstrip near the lodge. The road journey from the capital takes several hours over the Khomas Highland. As a luxury lodge in the Namib, it trades a site at the park gate for darkness and space.