Eleven nights, twelve days, around 3,400 kilometres from the Atlantic to the Highveld, across Namibia and South Africa. This is the Namibia Safari run in reverse, from the coast at Walvis Bay inland and east to Pretoria. It is the desert-focused counterpart to the longer cross-continent journeys, with the weight of the trip falling on Namibia: a cheetah conservation project, the game of Etosha, the dunes of Sossusvlei, the diamond ghost town of Kolmanskop, and the Fish River Canyon, before the train crosses into South Africa for the Orange River and the diamond town of Kimberley. The train is the thread that ties it together, a moving hotel of wood-panelled suites carrying no more than seventy-two guests. Three nights are spent off the train, two at a lodge on the edge of Etosha and one at a desert lodge near Sossusvlei. Between stops the country does the work, seen from your suite or from the open platform of the observation car.