Landscape

Just a short walk from Sossusvlei lies Deadvlei, and it feels like stepping onto another planet. A flat white clay pan surrounded by some of the tallest dunes in the world, containing the skeletal remains of ancient camel thorn trees.

What makes this place so eerie is that these trees are estimated to be around 900 years old, and they're still standing. The climate became too dry for them to decompose, so they just remain, perfectly preserved and blackened by the sun against the blinding white ground.

The silence here is something else entirely. No wind, no animals, nothing. Just you, the heat, and trees that have been standing since the Middle Ages.