Desert Dunes (Namibia)

For some reason I have always had this irresistible pull to the desert and the ocean. I thought this was a tension like magnetism between the North and South pole, but there is a resolution in Namibia. Towering red dunes spill out to the beach where they are met by crashing waves. You could walk for days and never see another person. I was in heaven.
The natural beauty in Namibia helped me to cope with the difficulty I have been having entering this developed Africa. The emptiness and landscape has helped nurture my desire for solitude as I deal with both this sense of reverse culture shock and the disbelief that my time in Africa has short by at a lightning speed and is coming to an end. I am longing for time to be kinder and slow down, and longing for the more traditional Africa. It all seems to be going by too fast.
But laying there, alone in the sea of red sand dunes, I was in the flow of life again. Peace in the desert is a different kind of peace that I have found anywhere else. It is a heavier, deeper kind of peace. Everything was muted out by endless bright red sand dunes and a stony grey sky.
I found that peace again in Sossosvlei. You drive to a certain point, then a4x4 truck takes you to the actual pan, a dead lake surrounded by red dunes. Despite everyone thinking i was crazy, I decided to hike the 10k through the desert. I took off my shoes and felt the grains of sand, silky soft, slip through my toes. The sun relentlessly baked my skin as I struggled over and through the dunes. Sand is not an easy substance to walk over, so it made the trek to Sossosvlei feel more like a pilgrimage of sorts.
The colors were stunning; a sailor blue sky, craggy mountains, red dunes with animal tracks winding their way through bright green shrubs. Red, pink and purple dunes rolled out as far as I could see. Everything felt pure and crisply alive.
Arriving at the sight itself was anticlimactic, listening to tourists hollering about putting on sunscreen. The highly photographed Dead Vlei, the cracked pan surrounded by dunes with dead trees speckled over it, was stunning to see but the real highlight for me was the walk through the desert, alone.