Landscape

This view is what you get when climbing Big Daddy, one of the tallest sand dunes in the world at around 325 metres. The climb takes about an hour and is every bit as exhausting as it sounds, but moments like this made me forget about that pretty quickly.

The dunes at Sossusvlei in Namibia's Namib-Naukluft National Park are some of the oldest in the world, estimated to be around 5 million years old. Their deep red-orange colour comes from iron oxide in the sand grains, basically rust built up over millions of years. The contrast between the lit and shadowed faces of the dunes is what makes this place so incredibly photogenic.

If you look closely at the bottom of the frame, you can spot two tiny figures and a parked car. It puts the sheer scale of these dunes into perspective better than any description could.