Namibia - Epilogue

Six weeks prior and one week after arriving at Sossusvlei Mountain Lodge, I joined a Dutch couple on their visit to Sossusvlei proper. The mountainous iron oxide tinted dunes are a striking contrast of form and color in the early morning sunlight. Not a far hike from a 4WD track into the dunes, are dozens of dead camel-thorn trees, some over 500 years in age in a desolate clay pan. A location for many commercial and feature film productions, the dead valley and surrounding red dunes are a photographer’s paradise. Camera aside though, the landscape is surreal, alien and unique, a sensation only hinted by some of the best photography. I found myself walking the mud-cracked turf alone; the Dutch couple had snapped a picture from the valley shore and return hiked to the game truck.
How do you travel thousands of miles from home, hike a fair distance then turn around and leave? I thought. The couple had in fact traveled tens of thousands of miles across the globe, visiting locations I personally dream about experiencing, for what? And there lies a difference: visit or experience.
Experiencing another country, culture, landscape, activity is not always easy. On the surface, we paint for ourselves an idea about the world seen, but often without context. Revealing that context takes flexibility. A flexibility in time, tolerance, adaptability and open-mindedness. The rewards are not always tangible, but it’s the intangible where ideas begin. What those ideas are and where those ideas take me, I do not know. I guess I could say, “My experience is not over yet.” Writing this blog has helped explore that experience from breaking preconceptions to shedding new insight on not only another part of the world, but our part as well.

This video was edited at the conclusion of my stay at Sossusvlei Mountain Lodge for demonstration purposes only, and revised shortly after returning home to include a select few settings during those two weeks in northern Namibia. Structurally, the footage follows my travels in rough chronological order.  This is just a tease of the 21+ hours of HD footage captured and soon to be logged and edited into proposal demos and short docs.