A clay pan in the Namib Desert surrounded by the world's tallest sand dunes — some reaching 325 metres — their colours shifting from pale apricot to deep blood-red depending on the angle of light.
The dunes of Sossusvlei are among the oldest on Earth. The Namib Desert in which they sit is at least 55 million years old — older than the Sahara, older than most of the world''s deserts — and the sand within it has been shifted, sorted, and restacked by the prevailing winds for millions of years. The iron content of the older dunes has oxidized over this time, turning them from golden yellow to a deep burnt orange that approaches red.
The tallest dunes here — notably Big Daddy and the asymmetrically shaped Dune 45 — reach 325 metres, making them the tallest sand dunes in the world. They are not static. The wind moves sand from the windward face to the slip face, and over months, the dunes migrate slightly. Over millennia, they have migrated hundreds of kilometres.
At the heart of the dune fields is Deadvlei — a clay pan where a few hundred years ago a river flooded and allowed camel thorn trees to grow. Then the river shifted, the water disappeared, and the trees died without rotting — the extreme aridity of the Namib prevents decomposition. The dead trees, some 900 years old, stand in the white pan surrounded by red dunes, their black branches against the pale sky. Every photograph of them looks like an art installation.
The light changes here with the hour. At sunrise, the east-facing slopes glow apricot. By midday, the colours flatten. At sunset, the west faces turn so deep a red that the sand appears wet with it.