I will never forget my first visit to Damaraland. In a sturdy, built-up Land Rover called Kangombe, we arrived at the camp well after sunset. Dinner was a boisterous affair. The camp staff sang around a campfire, and our guide sat with all the other guests at a long family-style dinner table, sharing tales of adventures in this rugged corner of the country. That evening a spotted hyena walked across the deck of my tented suite, and I waited with anticipatory trepidation for him to knock on my door. Earlier that day, Gerhard Thirion of Wilderness had picked me up in Windhoek. The drive from the capital felt like a journey through time. The city’s bustling streets gave way to open plains, dotted with hardy acacia trees and herds of springbok grazing in the distance. As we ventured further north, the landscapes grew harsher and the vegetation sparser. Rocky outcrops rose from the ground like ancient sentinels, their rugged faces weathered by millennia of wind and sun.

I woke up on my first morning at Wilderness Desert Rhino Camp to surroundings that had transformed into a stark, otherworldly beauty. Euphorbia damarana (milkbush) dotted the rocky terrain with its grey-green stems. Toxic to humans, but a lifeline to the desert-adapted black rhino, Diceros bicornis bicornis.

The largest free-roaming population of black rhinos on Earth calls this area home. They have adapted to survive here.

This truth, still unchallenged a decade after that first visit to Wilderness Desert Rhino Camp, carries the weight of a remarkable story – a species once teetering on the brink of extinction, now thriving in this unforgiving desert thanks to decades of unwavering efforts by civil society, government and local communities.

I have been back to this special camp at least once a year since then. Each visit reinstils a sense of wonder in me. Each meeting with the incredible staff that have made this camp their own. Each rumble of a guide-driven Land Rover over gravel and rock. Desert Rhino Camp holds a special place in the Namibian touristic treasure chest. Now, Wilderness has reimagined this much-loved destination, and Wilderness Desert Rhino Camp is reborn, though its heart, and its stories, remain unchanged. It is home to a collection of tales of resilience. Of how this landscape and its inhabitants were bound by an ancient pact of survival. Here in Damaraland, life persists against all odds.