On the Road Again

By the time my ride pulls up below my apartment complex, I’m starting to regret my decision. It’s 07h00. I’m about to spend four hours in a hot car with three breathing strangers and I haven’t interacted with anyone besides my family since before the plague.

Though a multiple-hour road trip is no way to return to the flaming hell of pandemic travel, I secure my mask, hop in and hope for the best. The best, in this case, being not much because trips to the desert don’t exactly get my heart racing. Neither do retreats called things like ‘New Moon Vision Quest’ because I’m not a character in some kumbaya, new age, fantasy novel. 

Let’s just say with Namibia finally open but the world still mostly closed, the pickings are slim and it’s about time I see more of my own country. Though I love travelling internationally and would ideally do both, that last part isn’t entirely my own fault.

Like many people trying to catch a local break, I used to click on links advertising Namibian tourism ‘specials’, mutter something along the lines of “are you f**king kidding me?” and then book a trip to Thailand, Indonesia or even Paris for two reasons.

One, it was far cheaper. And two, I wouldn’t have to risk actual life and limb travelling alongside the moronic Namibian stunt drivers keeping the lights in Avbob burning a clinical fluorescent.

Given bankruptcy and death, anywhere else has always been an easy sell but as the pandemic continues to humble local lodges, hotels and resorts – now keenly aware that Namibians’ money is as good as anyone else’s –I can finally (somewhat) afford to see home.

So I go.

I pack my bags for two days at Kwessi Dunes with a gang of strange but lovable freaks who spend the weekend doing yoga, meditation, energy healing and opening their hearts with big bowls of chocolate.

I sprawl in a chalet that has no business being that glamorous in the middle of nowhere. I write my worries on a piece of a paper and toss them into a famished fire. I get all interspecies telepathic with some oryx and zebra and they tell me everything is going to be alright.

I crest big red dunes, ask for mercy from snakes, scorpions and assorted stress and whoop into the twilight.

From my second stargazer bed, which is placed flush under the inky sky, I wait for a promised spray of shooting stars and return to something I thought was lost to me.

Travel.

This is the longest I have gone without it since I began and it shows.

I’ve felt smaller, disconnected, stranded and off kilter but as the sun rises setting cool yellow fire to the curtains in my room and the Namib Desert rolls red towards infinity, I come back from the dark and fearful place I have been and I know that I can go.

I can get into a car with three masked strangers.

I can keep my distance and still meet new people.

I can inch back towards the road, the world, the wilderness and the wonder.

And maybe, someday, I can fly.

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