Boarding from an ice-laden jetway in a far corner of the winterised airport at Frankfurt, it was hard to imagine the intimidation of the tropical climate far down south; passing as a spectator from on high along the sweaty coast of West-Central Africa. The names on the stylised map of the aircraft's journey read like a connoisseur's collection of unstable places and unspeakable events: Abidjan, Kano, Malabo, Cabinda, Huambo...then, with dawn's first light and rather suddenly, the Namibian placenames of Oshakati, Otjiwarongo, Swakopmund appeared and, finally, Windhoek.
Playing this airborne film reel, I was mentally planning how to photograph this latest African journey, not least how to make the most of the unique and subtly endemic Namibian wildlife. Black rhinos, leopards and desert elephants were the big prizes, but anyone even faintly familiar with the concept of Namibia as a nation cannot but help recall only one animal, indeed rarely is a country iconised by such a singular representative.
I speak, of course of the South African Oryx, better known south of the veterinary fenceline by its Afrikaans moniker - 'gemsbok' (the g is pronounced as the quintessentially guttural hard h, that beloved tongue-tying phoneme endemic to Southern Africa). Similar in appearance to its Arabian and Scimitar-horned relatives, the gemsbok is found periodically on wildlife reserves across the region. It belongs, however, in the deep sands, clay pans and boulder-strewn gravel pans of Namibia. Indeed, nowhere does it look so astonishingly regal.
Prior to our arrival I had read that Namibia's wildlife can take a little more work to find and photograph than some of its more densely vegetated neighbours, in particular South Africa and Zambia. I resolved to make sure I found at least one gemsbok, no matter the difficulty. However this proved to be a laughable goal and I needn't have been concerned - in reality the animal is found living wild everywhere, in large numbers - and frequently in the most unexpected of places, such as lumbering out of the deep desert near Deadvlei with no water nor shade for days in any direction.
Our first sighting was through a chopped, thorn-spiked clearing off a waterlogged sandy road from Omaruru into Camp Elephant at Erongo's gargantuan pseudo-National Park of Erindi reserve. Fresh from the triple quick succession sightings of ostrich, giraffe and warthogs, we rolled forward in our still unfamiliar desert-adapted off road camper and I sighted the iconic turned-back stance framed perfectly by foliage and haze of golden green.
Chewing slowly, gemsbok can be both skittish and brazen. This one struck a cautious approach and paced off, lost in an ever increasing complexity of brown wiry branches and white thorns as long as fingers to a soundtrack of engine tickover and early evening crickets starting their symphonies. I had made a big check on the list of wildlife sighting plans within a day of arriving. I was happy.
After setting up camp, an early night punctuated with the roars of lions and the distant shuffling of uneasy wildebeest and nyala saw us rising after an interrupted, humid sleep just as the sun was about to come up. The camp had flooded in the night during torrential summer rains - the severity of which was somewhat unexpected when driving across one of the world's driest countries.
Climate change has manifested in Africa by way of now unpredictable wet and dry seasons, leading to periods of long drought and short bursts of violent downpours and flooding. We were at the tail end of severe rain, the likes of which Namibians hadn't seen for five years, but it gave the land a rarely seen lush and flowery appearance, interspersed with classic vistas of parched thorn trees and rising corrugated plateaus.
Rusks and coffee - those safari essentials - and we were rolling forward in blue-grey dawn light. The thick foggy air above us blotted out any significant relief until later in the morning, when the violence of the sun burned away the cloud in a matter of minutes. The cooler damp mornings are appreciated until then. In short order we were presented again with a pair of grey-white-black gemsbok, this time trudging slowly across dark orange sand.
I snapped a torrent of images as their shadows shifted by the minute, and we resumed our journey deeper into the Erindi reserve, stopping momentarily to marvel at the brazen obviousness of a huge Nile crocodile perched on the banks of a waterhole. A pair of hippos rolled angrily at one another further out and we idled silently around the bank as they made their display.
Throughout the day gemsbok made their presence known, invariably in semi-shaded secrecy, moving through the thorn trees and desert flowers. I was entranced - an iconic Namibian animal in its homeland. Gemsbok are weirdly photogenic, blending easily into orange and pink sands and deep, soggy morning grassland and bushveld with equal talent.
Over the course of the ensuing weeks we caught up with many individuals, indifferent to the morning cool, midday sapping heat and sticky evening humidity. A handful had offspring with them; March is a time for juveniles to make their presence known, but the gemsbok is a stalwart protector of its personal space, and has the weapons to enforce it. Lions, buffalo and zebras alike won't dare get close to an adult oryx without a significant advantage such as injury or preoccupation with drinking or caring for neonates.
Skirting the gravel pans of the Namib-Naukluft, one so often sees the iconic silhouette of gemsbok - solitary and in herds - shimmering wildly on the horizon. Miraged and overwhelmed, hot air distorts the distance everywhere out in the deserts of Namibia - it's easy to get lost out there and impossible to focus on your destination. Slowly, surely the silhouette takes form, resolving into the heavy set stance of one of Africa's most beautiful antelope.
The canyonlands and dune sea abutting the lonesome camping community of Sesriem provide ample spacious tracts of land, with horizons stretching for miles and wandering gemsbok identified at the very edge. Down the Tsauchab riverbed, dry of course save for a few days of the year usually when the desert flowers bloom noisily over the sand, one comes to the iconic saltpan vistas of Deadvlei and Sossusvlei, landscapes that have brought fame and fortune to no end of covershoot photographers.
Even here, in the staunchly arid and inhospitable clay and salt surfaces bedecking the pits between hundred-metre high dunes, gemsbok stumble, oblivious to the double threat of weighty, molten hot sand and the beating sun. Perishingly thin, we encountered an individual no doubt on its way out of this life, but nonetheless able to muster strength enough to clop slowly on the hard, cracked white surface of Sossusvlei.
In short time we followed slowly, taking low refuge at the base of the few camelthorn trees around. Even we, in suncream, shaded hats and bush shirts were no match for the midday heat and in short order found ourselves beating a retreat up the fluid, and frequently confounding, four kilometres of deep sand back to the beginning of the road back to Sesriem. In such environs, even the campsite, fuel stop and the humid bar (inexplicably full of people who know each other in a place where no one lives that are found all over Africa) that make up the village seemed a towering metropolis.
Gemsbok are a keystone species in the desert wilderness, a role fulfilled in the wild areas across other regions of Africa and indeed most of the other continents by similar antelopine species (in its extravagance, Australasia, as usual, defies such a definition). The gemsbok mimics in particular the Arabian oryx of yore (slowly, oh so slowly, being returned to the fold) and the East African topi of much greater abundance, that favoured prey of lions and leopards alike on the plains of the Serengeti.
An integral part of indigenous culture and beliefs across the dusted lands of Namibia, Botswana and Northern South Africa, the San peoples have long appreciated the value of this robust antelope, for its meat, for it trails leading to water, and for the endlessly creative variety of animal products used for clothing, crockery, coming of age ceremonies and entertainment. The gemsbok more than any other inhabitant of this landscape seems to know its place in the world is here; perhaps that is why it appears so iconic to the visiting photographer.
Loading up our off-road special we dug deep tracks in the sand exiting Sesriem and, after a fraught effort to fill up the vehicle's dual petrol tanks, we joined the washed out gravel pan road heading further south, into Hardap Region and the diamond lands of South West Namibia's coastal Sperrgebiet prohibited area. Avoiding going that far, however, we arrived finally in the NamibRand; an incredible 200 square kilometre cooperative reserve of former cattle ranching land turned back to nature.
The astonishing rewilding of the NamibRand reserve is a testimony to the powers of willing and shared vision. Infamous amongst African wildlife aficionados and astronomers alike, the decision to drop fences amongst some 20 or so former ranches and return native flora and fauna to the environment has been wildly successful (pun intended). A dedicated ranger service preserves the essence of the park and visitors are permitted to set up camp at a handful of desert pitches open to the wildlife.
Daily herds of zebras, ostriches and springbok made their way through our camp. Early mornings were a festival of small mammals - African Wild Cats, Bat-eared Foxes, mongooses and the omnipresent Spotted Hyenas were found or heard everywhere. The heat of the day, however, was reserved for the gemsbok, who grumpily trudged over to the waterhole near our campground with near precision timing and set off the cascade of dominance over other mammals. Those antlers are exceptionally dangerous if you wander too close.
Eventually the gemsbok relent and the zebras are permitted to move in, having jostled on the sidelines for a good thirty minutes. The gemsbok saunter off to take refuge under a camelthorn and to wait out the baking heat of the early afternoon sun. A evening comes round, the antelope fan out across the plains of NamibRand, sighted in all directions on the horizons, intermingled with ostriches and springbok.
The night brings much magic to the windswept summer plains of NamibRand, with vicious lightening storms lighting up the skies above the distant Nubib Mountains and impressive winds blowing in off the surprisingly nearby Atlantic coast (though, with the ocean of dunes in between, you wouldn't know it). Grit and dust catch in your teeth and eyes, and the night's cooking fire needs to be carefully considered so as not to blow smoke into your face. The gemsbok had gone to ground, presumably hiding out from the terrors of the African night.
Whilst gemsbok are imagined, and often photographed, as solitary animals, they are also found in great herds - a surprising sight if you have thus far only seen them in isolation. Thundering along, kicking up dust in that fairytale fashion so beloved of the great herds of East Africa, a large number of gemsbok on the move is a truly breathtaking event.
We were fortunate enough the following morning, ambling across the powdery sand, cautioning our toes on the devil's thorn scrub plants that had erupted in the summer rains, seemingly from nowhere, to catch the sight I had come to see. Scores of gemsbok standing and occasionally darting in unison, moreover in absolute silence. Great divots of red sand were flung up by each hoof as the herd skipped up a particularly steep dune.
Pursuing at a slow idle along up a deep sand track cut up the dune as they disappeared, we were at once confronted with a spectacular panoramic vista of African-ness, stretching in all directions to a distant horizon. Plains of low grass whispering the night's breezy remnants, solid red dunes undulating along the spine of the reserve, craggy purple rock catching the edges of the sun and the great orange disk itself rising to punish the inhabitants of the magical land once again.
On the periphery of my vision a dust devil kicked up, and in front of it a herd of zebras charged away. Only Africa can produce such a vision of wild loveliness; a child's drawing of the way the world perhaps should be. Sealing the cameras and lenses away from the dust for the return journey back to icy Europe, one cannot escape the thought that this picture perfect land is forever out there while we return to the domestic.
All photography © Chris Milligan Photo. All views are my own. Seek local recommendations before photographing or approaching any wildlife.
Comentarios