Author: leighanne@laharbercreative.co.za

When in Namibia, and especially when you are right on the border of Botswana, visiting places like Mahangu National Park or a spot on the Okavango River, the temptation to jump across is real. 

It’s also practical and more than achievable when you book a multi-country tour that takes you from Namibia, across the border into Botswana and ends in Zimbabwe.

These tours are the ultimate Southern Africa adventure, but they require a little bit of understanding so that your crossing is smooth, without a moment of your precious holiday time being wasted.

Why Multiple Country Tours in Southern Africa Are So Popular

There was a time when a single country could fill up a fortnight without difficulty. Access wasn’t so simple, getting around took a lot of time, and the attractions were so plentiful that you needed as much time as you could get.

Namibia’s dunes alone can take 4 days to fully appreciate, without seeing the same place twice. 

Yet the itineraries booking fastest for 2026 are very different to those of years gone by. 

They thread through Namibia’s evergreen Zambezi Region into Botswana’s Chobe floodplains, then onward to the edge of Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls, three exceptional destinations joined by little more than a signature and a stamp.

And the logic of combining 3 destinations is a very practical decision, especially if you have the time and want a well-rounded tour.

Southern Africa’s safari industry has grown steadily over the past decade, and travellers with limited time are increasingly choosing efficient routes that link several highlights into one continuous journey rather than several short, disconnected trips. 

By doing this, a fortnight trip can now include sightings of elephants crossing the Chobe River at dusk and, two days later, standing close enough to the Victoria Falls, feeling the spray settle on your skin.

Land Borders vs Airports

Now, you might be thinking, why choose the open road rather than climb aboard a flight and get there 3 times faster?

It is a fair question, but doing so would really be missing out on half the fun.

No one can argue that a land transfer can take half a day or more, but that is the point because flying skims over Southern Africa, while the road lets you see so much more.

Crossing from Namibia into Botswana means you get to see the Mopane woodland slowly turn into riverine forest, dry Kalahari sand gives way to floodplain, and you get to see some of the birds and wildlife that make these in-between places home.

Many guided transfers also include stops along the way, at viewpoints, curio stalls, big attractions, or small border-town markets, so the drive becomes part of the itinerary rather than time spent waiting to arrive.

More than that, some border crossings in Namibia come with a bit of a geography lesson.

Cross near Kazungula, and you’re at one of the more curious points on the map. Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe all meet here, at the confluence of the Zambezi and Chobe rivers, though surveyors still argue over the finer details. 

Botswana and Zambia share barely 150 metres of border where the two rivers meet, joined to two separate tripoints rather than one clean crossing point, which is why some call this the world’s only international quadripoint while others insist it isn’t quite that. 

The Chobe River itself forms the border between Namibia’s Zambezi Region and Botswana for much of its length, and it’s this permanent water, in an area with very little else, that draws the elephant herds Chobe National Park is known for.

Further west, the road tells the story of the Okavango too.

Only a small amount of the water that keeps the river alive falls as local rain. The rest falls in Angola’s highlands, travels south as the Cubango River, crosses the Caprivi Strip (Zambezi Region), and only reaches the delta months later, in the dry season rather than the wet one. 

That delay in water is also what makes the delta so unusual: it floods when the surrounding Kalahari is at its driest, pulling wildlife in from the parched land around it.

And none of this is visible at thirty thousand feet.

The Land Borders of Namibia

Namibia’s most useful crossing for this route is Ngoma Bridge, and it crosses the Chobe River in the Zambezi Region.

It is the crossing most travellers heading towards Kasane and Chobe National Park will use, and it sits in an area characterised by reed beds, small fishing villages, and the occasional elephant making its own crossing nearby. It is one of the more beautiful borders in Africa.

Further west, near the settlement of Divundu, lies Mohembo, the border that is most used by tours travelling into Botswana’s Okavango Panhandle. 

Travellers heading towards Maun and the Delta rather than Chobe will more likely use this post, and it carries far less traffic than Ngoma, making the crossing fast and efficient.

Namibia and Botswana also share a crossing much further south at Mamuno, on the Trans-Kalahari Highway, though this route is usually only used by those heading towards Gaborone, making it more of a commercial route.

The Land Borders of Botswana

Botswana, bordered by Namibia to the west and Zimbabwe to the northeast, with a stretch of the Zambezi so narrow that four countries very nearly touch at a single point on the river, is the country in the middle of most tours that cover multiple destinations in Southern Africa.

Coming from Namibia, Ngoma Bridge and Mohembo are the two posts travellers are likely to use. 

Heading onward into Zimbabwe, most trips pass through Kazungula, a short drive from Kasane, where the road crosses close to where the Chobe meets the Zambezi.

A more peaceful alternative can be found much further south at Pandamatenga, though it is used more by those travelling directly between Francistown and Victoria Falls, and thus cuts out Botswana’s safari circuit almost entirely.

The Land Borders of Zimbabwe

For travellers on this particular route, Kazungula is the most used border crossing for visitors coming for the Falls as it sets them within a short drive of Victoria Falls town, often with the sound of the Falls reaching the car before the view does.

Zimbabwe’s other well-known crossings, the bridge to Zambia at Victoria Falls and Beitbridge on the South African border, belong to different routes entirely, though their locations help to give you an explanation as to why this small country has long served as something of a crossroads for the region’s overland travellers.

What Happens If There is a Delay at the Border?

One of the biggest upsets for any kind of holiday is a border delay, and unfortunately, they are impossible to predict. Some days, the flow of cars is just perfect, while on other days, for whatever reason, everyone ends up stuck and frustrated. And no one is happy sitting in the midday heat!

The good news is that, especially in the more remote regions, border delays are not the norm. Most of the border crossings from Namibia to Botswana, and Botswana to Zimbabwe, are off the beaten track and predominantly used by tour companies. 

This means your transfer won’t be jostling with agricultural trucks carrying fruits and meats that have to go through strict foot and mouth disease procedures before being allowed across.

It also helps to travel with a guide and to book your tour with a reputable tour operator.

Paperwork prepared ahead of time, a driver who knows which window to approach first, and the reassurance of travelling with someone who has done this crossing more times than they could count is enough security to turn any unpredictable wait into something that is simply part of the day.

Tips For Better Border Crossings

A little preparation changes a border crossing from an unknown into nothing more than a boring formality. Keep these tips in mind when you sign up for a multi-country Southern Africa tour:

• Keep your passport, visa documentation and any permits in one folder that can be reached without opening your suitcase.
• Choose shoes that slip off easily, since foot and mouth control mats are common at borders throughout the region.
• If possible, carry a small amount of US dollars in low denominations, even on a fully guided tour, for the odd incidental cost.
• If you are self-driving, try to avoid arriving right on opening time where possible, since the first hour will usually have the longest queue.
• Know that photography is usually not permitted at most border posts, so save the camera for the landscape on either side.
• And finally, let your guide lead the process. Standing back and letting someone experienced handle the formalities is, more often than not, the fastest route through.

Plan Your Own Intrepid Multiple Country Southern Africa Tour

The town of Solitaire has fascinated more than a few travellers over the years.

It is quite literally a town in the middle of nowhere, just off the C14, a route that connects its roughly 100 residents with the rest of the world.

Those who visit the settlement are usually entranced by its eccentric vibe.

The first thing you see as you enter the town is its sort of Mad Max welcome sign. Then you pass a series of rusted cars, some animal bones, and desert plants, before arriving in what one Instagrammer described as one of the “strangest towns you’ll ever stop at in Namibia”.

Many treat Solitaire as a stopover, but if you give it your time and attention, it might just be one of your favourite things about your holiday.

Where is Solitaire, Namibia?

On the map, Solitaire looks like a single dot dropped into a long stretch of nothing, roughly where anyone driving south from Windhoek starts wondering, and slightly worrying about, how much fuel is left in the tank. 

It sits at the junction of the C14 and C19, in Namibia’s Hardap Region, on the eastern edge of the Namib-Naukluft National Park. 

The Naukluft Mountains rise faintly to the north-east, and gravel plains run in every other direction, patched with camelthorn trees and the occasional startled oryx. 

It is not scenery that is particularly fascinating; rather, it just keeps going, on and on, into the distance, until what you think is a mirage of a town appears in front of you, before Solitaire seems to materialise out of nowhere.

The town is about 83 kilometres from Sesriem, the entry point for Sossusvlei’s dunes, and a good four-hour drive from Windhoek across the Khomas Highlands, down through either the Spreetshoogte or Remhoogte Pass. 

Heading the other way, toward the coast, the next fuel or shop is around 260 kilometres further on. For anyone driving Namibia’s southern circuit, Solitaire goes from being a possible detour into a stop on your itinerary.

What to do in Solitaire, Namibia?

Most visitors arrive with one single-minded goal, food and fuel, and leave, an hour or two later, wondering where the time went.

When you are visiting Solitaire, one of the things you simply have to do is visit the bakery.

A slice of the famous apple pie, baked to the same German Apfelstrudel recipe that made the place famous decades ago, arrives warm enough to fog a coffee cup left too close, and tastes absolutely scrumptious.

Regulars like to eat it on the shaded terrace, where they can savour the slice and relax with a cup of coffee.

Once you’ve ticked pie off your to-do list, the next thing you can do is go on a slow walk. 

Vintage cars and old farm equipment sit rusting in the sand around the shop and the small church nearby, more of an accumulation than a statement display, decades of vehicles simply left where they finally gave up. 

Wind moves through the empty frames with a faint metallic creak, and in the low, orange light of early morning or late afternoon, the rust seems to hold onto the day’s heat a little longer than the ground around it. 

For those staying the night, nearby lodges run guided drives up the escarpment at sunset, usually via Spreetshoogte Pass, and several run their own mountain bike trails out into the surrounding gravel plains. 

A short drive away, a private conservation project runs guided cheetah visits. This stretch of Namibia is as much working land as it is scenery. 

Fuel, tyre repairs and a well-stocked shop round out any of the practicalities needed to be done, and you’ll want to stock up, because the next stop is quite a distance away.

What is special about Solitaire?

Even after fuel and pie, Solitaire tends to stick in the memory more than places twice its size, and that mostly has to do with it being quite an interesting place. These are just a handful of the things that make the town so special:

Its name has two meanings. 

When Willem Christoffel van Coller’s wife named the farm in 1948, she chose Solitaire because it means both a single, mounted diamond and a lonely, isolated place. Both turned out to be accurate.

It was built as a farm, not a pit stop. 

The original homestead covered a massive 33 000 hectares and began life as a two-room cottage. The petrol pump, shop and bakery all came much later, added out of necessity rather than any grand plan.

Almost nobody actually lives here.

Solitaire has a petrol station, a bakery, a general store, a lodge and a handful of staff quarters, but no real residential population to speak of. Everyone here is either working or passing through.

The apple pie has a Scottish accent. 

Percy “Moose” McGregor, the baker who put Solitaire on the map, was a Scotsman who settled in the desert in the 1990s and turned an old family Apfelstrudel recipe into a local legend, long before food blogs existed to spread the word for him.

It really is the last stop for a very long way. 

Heading toward the coast, the next fuel and shop are roughly 260 kilometres away. The town has, over the years, rescued more than one under-prepared traveller.

The car wrecks are not for show. 

Every rusting vehicle scattered around the settlement broke down or was simply abandoned here at some point. Nobody curated the collection. The desert did.

The nights are something special. 

Moose McGregor once explained that he stayed for the barking geckos and the stars, which have almost nothing between them and the ground to dim them.

By the time your tank is full and the last morsel of your apfelstrudel is gone, you will understand why this town, built almost by accident, is such a special place.

There’s a lot said about guided tours and scenic drives, but personally, I am most content when I am exploring a new place on foot.

Being able to walk about with my camera in hand, really paying attention to everything around me, even the tiniest flowers or some interesting insect, is about the best way to really bring me into the moment and enjoy it to the fullest.

I am far from the only traveller who loves a good walk. Walking safaris in Africa are gaining immense popularity in 2026, but as usual, Namibia does things differently.

Namibia is known for its endless space, and so it should come as no surprise at all that this is a country of walking trails, many of which you can do safely, without needing a guide.

Being on a self-drive tour will give you even more freedom to follow your whimsy and stop where you like, or where there is a walking trail you’d like to explore.

Why Namibia is a Great Place for a Walk

Namibia is the sort of country that forces you to be patient.

Its deserts (the Namib and the Kalahari) are hot and lazy and always changing. It is almost as though the sands wait for the traveller to slow down enough to notice the subtle changes in colour across a dune face, or the way morning light catches a rare bout of frost on a gravel plain in winter.

A car window makes a fine frame for that kind of experience but the feet make a better one.

This is one of the least crowded countries on earth, and a great deal of it is better seen while walking.

National parks, private reserves and community conservancies have spent years laying short trails that let visitors step out of the vehicle without the need for hiking boots, a permit application, or a week to spare. Some cost nothing to walk on while others cost the price of a good coffee back home.

The pace of walking trails in Namibia suits a certain kind of traveller rather well.

Those who have already done the big-name safaris elsewhere in Africa often find Namibia’s smaller things, like seeing a gecko doing press-ups on warm sand, looking at the haze that settles over the Fish River Canyon at midday during the dry season, or hearing the crunch of quartz underfoot on granite that has stood since long before there were animals to walk on it, so much more appealing.

The Best Easy Access Walking Trails in Namibia

A handful of walking trails in Namibia will give you easy access, require no serious fitness, have no lengthy booking process, and no need to camp overnight with a ranger.

Sesriem Canyon, Namib-Naukluft Park

The canyon cuts thirty metres into the earth in places, and it has been carved slowly by the Tsauchab River over thousands of years.

A short, self-guided path leads into the riverbed, where the walls narrow and the desert heat gives way to shade and a startling sense of serenity.

To access the trail, you’ll need to pay the park entrance fee and make sure that you have enough water and a good pair of hiking boots.

Waterberg Plateau Park

Self-drive is not permitted inside Waterberg, but it is a destination included on many itineraries.

The park has nine short, well-marked trails close to the rest camp, and most can be finished within an hour.

The Aloe Circle and Fig Tree Walk drift through stunning fever tree groves and past old San engravings, while sharp eyes might catch a giraffe crossing the aptly named Giraffe Crossing Loop.

Twyfelfontein, Damaraland

Namibia’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site has more than two and a half thousand rock engravings, some thought to be several thousand years old.

You’ll need a guide who’ll take you on a loop of a couple of kilometres past images recording the animals and journeys of the San hunter-gatherers who once passed through here.

The walk takes under an hour.

Spitzkoppe

Locals nickname it the Matterhorn of Namibia, though this spectacular granite inselberg that rises from the flat desert plains hardly needs the comparison.

Community guides at the campsite lead slow walks of an hour or so to Bushman’s Paradise, where you’ll visit painted rock shelters that have ancient images left by San artists centuries ago.

No booking is required, but a tip for the guide is customary.

Kolmanskop, near Lüderitz

Diamonds built this town in the early twentieth century, and the desert sands are now slowly reclaiming it.

Visitors are allowed to wander freely through the roofless, dune-filled rooms at their own pace and the town has  

A short guided tour usually runs each morning, and it is included in the entrance ticket, though many prefer simply to get pleasantly lost among the buildings on their own.

Walvis Bay Lagoon

A beautiful paved promenade traces the eastern edge of the lagoon for around three kilometres, past thousands of pink-legged flamingos feeding in the shallows on a good day.

The walk takes under an hour and costs nothing, save perhaps lunch or dinner afterwards at the waterfront.

NamibRand Nature Reserve

Guided walks in NamibRand Nature Reserve, one of the best places to go stargazing, will take you through some of the darkest, quietest landscapes in southern Africa.

You can also visit the Fairy Circles, the mysterious bare patches that dot the desert floor.

Tips For Walking Trails in Namibia

There’s nothing complicated about booking and setting out on the various walking trails in Namibia, but keeping a few tips in mind can help:

• Book ahead where booking is possible. Waterberg’s longer trails and Twyfelfontein’s guided slots fill quickly during the cooler, drier winter months.
• Carry more water than you think you’ll need. Two litres per person is a sensible minimum for anything over half an hour, since Namibia’s dry air draws moisture from the body faster than most visitors expect.
• Keep cash in Namibian dollars on hand. Several memorable sites, including Twyfelfontein and Kolmanskop, still rely on cash for entrance fees, and card machines cannot always be trusted this far from town.
• Choose closed shoes with real grip. Granite domes and canyon paths reward proper soles over sandals, however tempting sandals seem in the heat.
• Leave rock art exactly as found. Oils from human skin can damage pigments that have survived for millennia, so admire from a distance and keep hands in pockets.
• Walk early. The light is stunning, temperatures drop, and wildlife tends to be more active in the hour after sunrise than at any other time of day.

Including Walking in a Self-Drive Itinerary

Most of these trails sit conveniently along the routes that self-drive Namibia tours already follow. Waterberg breaks the journey between Windhoek and Etosha, Sesriem anchors the Sossusvlei leg nearly every itinerary includes, and Kolmanskop rewards travellers looping south towards Lüderitz with something unlike anything else on the route.

None of it requires reshuffling a carefully planned trip. A short walk simply asks for an extra hour tucked between fuel stops and lodge check-ins, often the hour travellers remember longest.

If you’d like to explore a few walking trails in Namibia, we can help you decide on the best itinerary.

Its unusual name often gets confused with Australia, and while it is far from the biggest or most exciting town in Namibia, Aus is a regular feature on many itineraries, if only as a place where you can stop for a cold drink and a walk about to stretch your legs.

But stay for even one evening, and Aus stops being a stopover and starts being somewhere worth visiting.

With wild horses drinking from a trough a few kilometres away, the wind carrying a chill few expect to feel this far into the desert, and the low brick ruins east of town holding a hundred-year-old story most visitors never hear, Aus can be interesting and, in this guide, we’re sharing everything worth knowing before you go.

Where is Aus?

Aus sits high up, in a fold of granite hills at the eastern edge of the Namib, in Namibia’s Karas region, roughly two and a half hours’ drive from Keetmanshoop and a little over an hour from the beautiful coastal town of Lüderitz (which just happens to be one of the best places for seafood).

The B4, a good tar road, runs straight through the middle of it, following the same route the railway once took before the Namib sand made the final stretch to the coast too dangerous for trains.

At close to 1 400 metres above sea level, Aus stands well clear of the desert floor below it.

The air is thinner here, the light a lot sharper on the eyes, and on winter mornings the cold settles into the granite in a way that will make you completely forget you are in a hot desert country.

In fact, it gets so cold here that snow was recorded in 1963, an event still spoken about between the locals, and Aus regularly registers the coldest winter nights anywhere in Namibia.

Its name comes from the Khoekhoe word for a big snake, and is tied to a natural water spring once used by Nama hunter-gatherers long before any road or railway even existed.

The town itself is barely a town at all; it’s a fuel station, a hotel, a handful of houses.

But its position, precisely where the inland highlands give way to the coastal desert, makes it one of the more useful stops in southern Namibia, whichever direction you happen to be travelling in during your tour.

What is There to Do in Aus?

Aus, Namibia might be a barely there slow town, but there are enough things to do to fill a day or two.

• The wild horses at Garub

About twenty kilometres west of Aus, there is a simple hide that overlooks a waterhole where Namibia’s only population of feral horses come to drink.

Their exact origins are debated and include a stud farm at Kubub, cavalry horses from the German colonial forces, or both, but their resilience is not in question.

They have survived alone in one of the driest places on earth for more than a century and are a sight worth seeing.

• Walking and riding the Aus Mountains

The Klein Aus Vista lodge, just outside town, has several marked trails through granite boulders and camelthorn valleys that can be explored on foot, mountain bike or horseback.

Along the way sit the crumbling remains of First World War ramparts and, oddly, an old Hudson motor car, riddled with bullet holes from a long-forgotten shootout with diamond smugglers.

• The land art horse

On the plains below the lodge, a galloping horse the size of a football field has been set into the stone itself, a tribute to the animals that have made this area well-known.

• The prisoner of war camp ruins

Five kilometres east of town, low brick walls and a small cemetery mark where more than a thousand German prisoners lived out the end of the First World War.

It is a sobering site, and worth the short detour, whether you are a history buff or not.

• Stargazing

With almost no light pollution and clear, dry air for most of the year, the night sky above Aus will give you one of the least interrupted views of the stars left on the continent.

As it is, Aus is not exactly a destination in its own right but rather more of a hinge on which a good southern Namibia itinerary swings.

Coming from Fish River Canyon or Keetmanshoop, it is the last proper stop before the road drops toward Lüderitz, Kolmanskop and the Atlantic.

Coming the other way, it is where the coastal fog finally lifts, and the light starts to look like you are back in the desert again.

Either way, a night here is a great way to break up a long drive.

What is the History of Aus?

Long before Aus appeared on any map, a natural spring here provided sustenance to the Nama communities moving through the region, which is where its name, which means big snake in Khoekhoe, comes from.

When Adolf Lüderitz began acquiring land along this coast in the 1880s, Aus fell within it, and a trading post slowly grew around the water source.

Sometime later, a railway line was built to connect the new coastal settlement with the interior, and it passed directly through Aus, some of it, uncomfortably so. The line was built using forced labour from the Shark Island camp near Lüderitz during what is known as a particularly grim chapter of the colonial period.

Aus’s most defining moment came in July 1915, after German colonial forces surrendered to Union troops from South Africa.

A prisoner of war camp was established just outside town to hold German non-commissioned officers, more than fifteen hundred of them at its peak.

What followed was unusual for the time.

Rather than simply enduring captivity, the prisoners built their own brick houses with floors sunk below ground level for insulation, laid out vegetable and flower gardens, formed a brass band, staged their own theatre productions, and even engineered a working clock loud enough to be heard a mile away.

Germans in the camp reportedly joked that in Aus, things really were finished, a pun on the town’s name that has outlasted the camp itself by more than a century.

The camp closed in 1919, its ruins declared a national monument in 1985, and Aus settled back into life as a small farming and trading post, sustained for decades by karakul sheep.

The horses that scattered during those war years, whether from the Kubub stud farm or army lines disrupted by the fighting, adapted to the desert around Garub and never really left.

In its own way, Aus has spent the last century being shaped by people and animals who arrived unplanned and chose, against the odds, to stay.

Timing Your Trip

Southern Namibia’s dry, cool months, roughly May to September, suit Aus best.

The days are clear and mild, the wild horses are easier to spot as sparse grazing draws them regularly to Garub, and driving conditions on the B4 are at their most pleasant and predictable.

You will want to pack for cold weather; it gets especially nippy after dark. Even in a desert town, winter nights can drop close to freezing, and more than one underprepared traveller has been caught out by it.

You will want to fuel up in Aus before continuing in either direction. Stations become scarce fast on the roads toward Lüderitz, Sesriem or Fish River Canyon, and this small town’s garage has saved plenty of self-drive itineraries from an awkward roadside wait.

Travelling Here Well

Aus asks very little of travellers.

If you stay on marked roads and trails, particularly near the Sperrgebiet boundary, where the old diamond restricted zone still protects a very fragile desert habitat, watch the horses from the hide rather than trying to approach them, and give the prisoner of war cemetery the same respect you would give any war grave, your trip will be very much fulfilling.

And none of this requires much planning on your part.

Most specialist Namibia itineraries already route through Aus as a matter of course, precisely because it sits at the point where the inland routes and the coastal ones naturally meet, and a good local operator will have already worked out the timing, the fuel stops and the right overnight stay long before you arrive.