I picked up some unusual travelling literature on a recent trip through Namibia, a book called ‘Faraway Sandy Trails’ written by Lily Marion Newton more than sixty years ago. It gave me the opportunity to compare routes and find amusing and interesting anecdotes about the country and the days of travel before organised tourism and tar roads.
This time, with Sandy Trails on the seat next to me, I decided to take the Gamsberg Pass from Windhoek to the Namib, a route that was a hair-raising adventure in Lily’s day. Back then there was only one track, which was constantly changing as the strong winds blew sand across it, forcing travellers to find their own route. Lily and her husband Charles packed their car (fondly named ‘Abbie’) with all that was necessary for a daring trip into the desert: extra fuel, planks for jacking up the car in the sand, a sketched map, compass, food, water and bedding. They left instructions to alert the police if they didn’t arrive at their destination.
At the beginning of their trip, they were advised to meet a farmer who provided directions - describing landmarks to guide them - and who warned them to avoid old tracks that could lead them astray.
She wrote that on their arduous crossing through the Gamsberg Mountains they saw all the dangers and very little of the track ‘for the pass is so massed with enfolding ridges, with deep ravines and mighty outcrops, that it is impossible to trace the road as it vanishes and emerges in all this confusion’.
The way she described the route is terrifying: ‘The road is so narrow that it would be impossible for two cars to pass on the inclines or declines; the turns so sharp that Abbie had to be eased around them, no easy task when travelling down at such an angle; and when we turned, the back bumper seemed to hang over sheer nothing! Charles maintained that when we were climbing there were only three things in view: the nose of the car in the sky, the side of the cliff on one side and the nothingness on the other! At the top of each rise, the road invariably sheered off to the right or left and we definitely had to hesitate a moment on the summit while Abbie righted herself until we could see the new direction.’
So many years later, my journey from Windhoek was a completely different and a much more relaxing experience. As I drove along in a modern 4x4, enchanted by the beauty around me, I ruminated on how things had changed since their adventure to the desert.
I headed south-west from Windhoek by following the C26 through the gentle hills of the Kupferberg Pass. Baboons watched me pass, and later on gemsbok eyed me, springbok pronked and giraffe loped across the road. The good gravel road winds its way through the undulating Namibian countryside before reaching the spectacular mountain landscape of the Gamsberg Pass, one of Namibia’s most beautiful passes. I breathed it all in, the small green trees accentuated against the butter-yellow grass and the striated mountains, stopping at intervals at the viewpoints to stretch my legs and take some photographs. I soon switched from city- to snail-pace, the best way to appreciate a pass. Besides some steep dips into the riverbeds, the road is wide enough nowadays, having been filled and levelled over the years, never to feel any exposure or in the least bit at risk. And I had the exquisite beauty all to myself, only seeing one car along the way. At the end of the pass, I felt a tug of sadness when I crossed the cattle grid onto flatter ground. But the countryside has other jewels to offer, and the option at the crossroads to head north over the Kuiseb Pass to Walvis and Swakopmund, or southwards over the Gaub to Solitaire and Sesriem.
I was heading southwards and turned towards the famed dunes and the desert beauty that always alters your perception and adds a few extra shades to your paintbox. More than anything, the pass had made me shift to a lower gear, metaphorically-speaking, to drive slower and tune into the world around me. That way of being when the journey becomes all important, rather than the destination which glimmers on the horizon. And the true way of travel.
Lily and Faraway Sandy Trails had inspired me to take a different road, which had enriched me along the way. I was left looking forward to exploring some other Faraway routes and a different type of time-travel.