Namibia

Namibia works best as a slow build: a night or two in Windhoek, then west into the Namib, where the dunes at Sossusvlei rise higher than most buildings you've stood next to. Deadvlei, the white clay pan ringed by 900-year-old dead camel-thorn trees, is one of the most photographed landscapes on the continent for good reason. From there the route usually runs to the coast at Swakopmund, then north through Damaraland to Etosha, where a floodlit waterhole can put a dozen species in frame at once after dark.

This west-to-north arc — Windhoek, Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Damaraland, Etosha — is the backbone of Muto Tours' own Namibia Explorer package, and it's also the shape most longer multi-country routes take when Namibia is combined with Botswana and Zimbabwe: Namibia opens the trip in the desert and coast, then the route moves east into the Delta and Chobe before finishing at Victoria Falls, or the reverse. Distances between stops are real — Namibia is a big, sparsely populated country, and road transfer days of several hours between destinations are normal and are built into the pacing rather than rushed.