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Damaraland

In Damaraland, plants and animals have over millennia evolved side by side with the harsh environment, creating unusual geological features, which together with a wealth of rock paintings and engravings, a population of desert-adapted elephant and rhino, combine to form the unique attraction to this region. 

The mountain massif Brandberg (Burnt Mountain) found in Damaraland is home to many prehistoric rock paintings, the most famous and enigmatic being the ‘White Lady’ of Brandberg.

Damaraland is also home to the fossil remains at Doros Meteorite Crater, as well as to the Petrified Forest, where some 200 million years ago an antediluvian flood deposited 30 metre long treetrunks.

Damaraland was once an area occupied primarily by the Damara people, but over time became home to other tribes such as the Hereros and the displaced Riemvasmakers of South Africa. Today, many residents of Damaraland are thus of mixed heritage, but most consider themselves Damara. 

The Damaraland community comprises a unique group of people who recognised the value of the wildlife on their land and formed a Community Wildlife Conservancy to protect it. 

Until 1981, Damaraland was unprotected and open to poachers, mostly from outside of the of the Damaraland area. In the interests of the Damarland wildlife a game guard system was eventually formed with people from the community and the welfare of the wildlife increased. After poaching activities were halted, Wilderness Safaris joined the community’s conservation efforts in 1996 and co-established what is now the most successful community-based tourism venture in Namibia. In 1998, the success of Damaraland Camp helped the community to have their land proclaimed as the Torra Conservancy, and what is now the leader of four Community Wildlife Conservancies in Namibia. 

Today, the Torra Conservancy is one of the most successful in all of Africa meeting all its management costs and making a profit which is then re-invested into community projects for their benefit. It is the first community conservancy which is able to sustain itself without donor funding

Travellers to Damaraland fly into the camps by air charter and are accommodated in luxury tents. Activities at these camps include nature walks, drives in 4x4 vehicles, star-gazing and the sheer exhilaration and enjoyment of the vast panoramas and wide open spaces that Damaraland offers.