Day 1: Hobatere Conservancy, outside Etosha National Park
Elevation: 3,591 ft

By Sanjayan

The worst is already over once an expedition is actually underway. But we have not even begun yet and already the activity is frantic as we procure, test, pack, lose, and repack gear. 

When you are out of contact, too far from rescue, and planning on walking across one of the oldest deserts on the planet, its hard to actually know beforehand what you will need. When you're also limited to six camels and your backs, what you attempt to leave behind plagues you with doubt.

Especially when there are lions around.

The Camels are Dwindling in Number

If only we had nine camels as we originally planned, packing would perhaps not be so difficult. But our numbers were unexpectedly diminished when one camel got a bit too old to make the long journey, another got eaten by a lion and a third got itself pregnant. 

The camels are imported all the way from Australia, where they are feral — African camels cannot be brought from the Sahara into Namibia because of fear that foot-and-mouth disease would infect the local livestock industry. The one that died is probably the first Australian camel to face and fatally lose to lions.

Gear Trouble, But Amazing Technology 

Our gear works in bits. My camera can take videos — but it's incompatible with my colleague’s (Dr. Richard Jeo’s) laptop. My computer won’t talk to the microwave satellite system to which we have to upload images, though Richard's will.

And neither seems to charge up with our solar panels — the sole source of power for our low-carbon walk. The panels themselves are flexible, like an Arabian rug draped over the camels, charging storage cells as we hike in the sun.

But eventually, incredibly, with band-aids and temporary fixes, we piece everything together and we manage to send this text and the accompanying photos off — our first broadcast from the field. 

It is an amazing feat of technology, really.  What I see and what I write — from this place perhaps 100 miles from the nearest human settlement, in the second-least populated place on the planet — is being bounced off a satellite right into our virtual base camp…which in this case is the Conservancy's Worldwide Office in Arlington, Virginia.

Next Up: Long, Long Walks

We will start walking tomorrow at dawn. We will attempt 20-25 kilometers per day, in a meandering path that will help us explore the country and provide a rapid ecological overview of the land. Here are some of our objectives:

• We will investigate animal sightings, particularly of mega-carnivores.
• We will look for the desert-adapted race of the black rhino — one of Africa’s most endangered animals, and now unfortunately burdened by a literal price (of $60,000 dollars) on its head by poachers. 
• We will note sources of water deep in the desert and gather other information to help determine whether this land can serve as a key protected area linking two of Africa’s great national parks — Etosha, on whose border we currently sit, and the Skeleton Coast National Park. 
• Above all, we will attempt to end at the ocean — the cold South Atlantic, now some hundreds of kilometers to the west of us, thereby completing the first-ever transect of this desert on foot. 

Elephants, Lions, Camels and a Dog 

We are off to an auspicious start.  Just as we land at our mustering point, a rough dirt strip, we spot from the air a big bull elephant charging a pride of lions — four adults and three cubs – that scatter before it.

It is an astonishing and rare sight in the Kunene: a reminder that lions may always be nearby.

Our camels (which arrived by truck) are staked nearby, and we certainly cannot afford to lose any more. Tonight we will tie up a dog along side the camels to warn us of marauding lions and keep the males (the camels, I mean) away from the females. 

That's the plan, anyway.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Sanjayan/TNC (Deserts of Namibia); Photo © Sanjayan/TNC (Day 1: Aerial view of Sanjayan's starting point - edge of Etosha National Park).