Town · Karas, Namibia
Karasburg
Sheep farming and railway town on the B3 between Grünau and the Ariamsvlei border, the fuel and supply stop of the far south, with old Warmbad about 50 km away.
Short answer
Karasburg is in Karas, Namibia. This page lists 5 places to stay and 3 places to eat and drink. The nearest park with an entry fee on this site is Fish River Canyon (ǀAi-ǀAis), about 121 km away, where international adults pay from N$280.
- Places to stay
- 5
- Eat and drink
- 3
- Park fee nearby: Fish River Canyon (ǀAi-ǀAis)
- US$17 €15 · N$280about 121 km away
- Where
- Karas, Namibia28.01°S 18.75°E
In and around Karasburg
8 places listedWhere to stay in Karasburg 5
- 28.02°S 18.75°EGuest houseMadisa7th Avenue, Karasburg+264 81 253 8513madisa-accommodation.business.site
- 28.02°S 18.75°EGuest houseAant Zebra Bed and BreakfastMain Street, Karasburg+264 63 270 378
- 28.01°S 18.75°EGuest houseAvondsrus Gastehuis25th Avenue, Karasburg+264 81 127 3408
- 28.01°S 18.75°EGuest houseMainstreet B&BMain Street, Karasburg+264 81 263 2453
- 28.02°S 18.75°EHotelU&K Bed & BreakfastKalkfontein St, Karasburg+264 81 322 2154
Restaurants and cafes 2
- EpataRestaurant · Karasburg
- HanzellRestaurant · Karasburg
Bars and pubs 1
- Generation Pub & RestaurantBar · Kalkfontein St, Karasburg
Karasburg (Kalkfontein until 1939) is the sheep farming town of Namibia’s far south, on the B3 road that links the B1 at Grünau with the South African border at Ariamsvlei. Trucks coming in from South Africa stop here, and it is the obvious place for self-drivers off the Upington road to shop and refuel. It is a practical place: fuel, shops, a bed, and a short drive to Warmbad, one of the oldest mission settlements in the country.
Getting there
Most people drive. The B3 is tarred and runs 179 km from Grünau to the border at Nakop, where it becomes the N10 to Upington. Karasburg sits about 110 km west of the Ariamsvlei border post, which is open 24 hours, and roughly 710 km south of Windhoek. The C10 passes just outside town. It is a gravel road, running southeast to the Velloorsdrif (Onseepkans) border post and northwest towards ǀAi-ǀAis. That crossing is not open around the clock, so check its hours on our border post page before you aim for it.
When to go
This is hot, dry country. Summer days go well over 40°C and winter nights drop below freezing, so pack warm clothes even if the afternoons feel mild. What little rain falls (about 128 mm a year at the town’s weather station) mostly comes from early January to early April. For walking about I would pick the cooler months, May to September.
What to do
Most of the interest is just outside town. Warmbad, about 50 km away, grew around hot springs. Missionaries started a church and a pastor’s house there in 1805, the first European style buildings in Namibia, and the mission station dates from 1806. The old German prison is now a small museum on local history, and the cemetery has a memorial to Jacob Morenga, who fought German troops in more than 50 battles and is one of the country’s national heroes. The Namibia Tourism Board lists the Warmbad hot springs among the south’s attractions, but a 2016 report found the resort mostly empty and poorly kept, so ask in Karasburg whether the pool is running before you drive down.
North of town rise the Great Karas Mountains, with Schroffenstein the highest peak. Back in Karasburg, Bondels Dam (built in 1959) lies about 7 km west, and the railway station where South Africa’s wartime line met the German network in 1916 is still in use.
Good to know
Karasburg has a fuel station open around the clock and supermarkets, which matters on a road with few towns. Fill up here. One traveller who bought a local SIM card in 2023 was sent from the post office to the police and back to the post office before it was sorted, so allow time. ǁKaras is not among the regions where the CDC lists malaria transmission (they are in the north and northeast), and it recommends only bite precautions for the rest of the country, so repellent is enough. Farms along the roads are private land, so shut any gate you open.
History and culture
Karasburg (Kalkfontein until 1939) began as a settlement of the Bondelswarts, a Nama people of the far south, and grew with the German railway station built there. In 1922 the South African administration used the station as its base to put down a Bondelswarts rising with bomber aircraft, a scandal that reached the League of Nations. Nearby Warmbad holds an even older story, of the first mission in the country and of Jacob Morenga's war against German rule.
- Mid 1800s
The Bondelswarts (today the ǃGamiǂnun, a Nama clan) held about 40,000 square km from the Orange River north to beyond the Great Karas Mountains and west to the Fish River. By 1922 they had lost more than 95% of it, through confiscation and sales. source
- 1890s
Germany signed a protection treaty with the Bondelswarts in April 1890 and raised its flag at Warmbad. Soon after, the Bondelswarts and other groups signed away a huge area to the British Karas Khoma syndicate, which later chose the best farmland and waterholes for itself. source
- 1903 to 1906
A Bondelswarts rising broke out in October 1903, and by the end of 1905 German forces had killed about half of the Nama and 75 to 80% of the Herero, by one historian's count, in what is now known as the Herero and Nama genocide. Jacob Morenga harried the German posts from the Great Karas Mountains with 500 to 800 riflemen until his defeat in May 1906, and the peace of December 1906 left the Bondelswarts a reserve of 1,750 square km. source
- 1909
The Germans built a branch railway from Seeheim, on the Lüderitz line, to Kalkfontein, giving the settlement its station. source
- 1915 to 1916
South Africa invaded German South West Africa in the First World War and laid a supply line from De Aar through Nakop. In 1916 it joined the German network at Kalkfontein. source
- May 1922
When the Bondelswarts would not hand over the returned exile Abraham Morris, Administrator Gysbert Hofmeyr gathered 370 mounted riflemen and two DH9 bombers at Kalkfontein South. At Guruchas the planes bombed and machine gunned the Bondelswarts' livestock, killing two children, and by the surrender on 7 June about 100 Bondelswarts were dead, a few women and children among them and Morris too. The affair damaged South Africa's name abroad and was one of the first uprisings examined by the League of Nations' Permanent Mandates Commission. source
- 1929 to 1947
The settlement became a village in 1929, Kalkfontein was renamed Karasburg in 1939, and it became a municipality on 15 October 1947. source
- Until 1990
South Africa ruled the territory as South West Africa and applied apartheid there. The UN renamed it Namibia in 1968, and the country became independent under that name on 21 March 1990. source
- Language
- We could not find 2023 census language figures for the region. In the 2001 census Afrikaans was the main home language in 40% of ǁKaras households, Nama/Damara (Khoekhoegowab) in 26% and Oshiwambo in 23%. source
- Farming
- The town lives off the sheep farms around it, and the area is known in particular for karakul sheep. source
- Church
- Some Afrikaans speakers moved to German South West Africa after the South African War (the Second Boer War) rather than live under British rule, and the Dutch Reformed Church followed them. The cornerstone of the church hall near the Kalkfontein station was laid on 14 May 1939, and Karasburg became a congregation of its own in 1952. source
- Football
- Karasburg is home to Young Brazilians, a club that has played in Namibia's top league. source
For German visitors: The railway that made Karasburg was German: the 1909 branch line from Seeheim to Kalkfontein, built in the colony of German South West Africa. source
For German visitors: From 1867 Warmbad was run by the Rhenish Missionary Society from Germany, which built a school in 1868 and a new church in 1877. source
For German visitors: Uwe Timm's novel Morenga (1978) follows a German army vet who volunteered for the colonial army during the war of 1904 to 1907 in which Jacob Morenga fought. It was filmed by Egon Günther in 1983 and 1984, and Lars Kraume's 2023 film Der vermessene Mensch draws on it. source
For German visitors: Germany acknowledged the killing of the Herero and Nama as genocide in 2015 and agreed a contested aid deal with Namibia in 2021. source
For German visitors: Germany helped pay for the restoration of the Warmbad hot springs and some of its historic buildings between 2004 and 2006. source
Main sights in Karasburg
7- Karasburg railway station
The railway is why the town exists. TransNamib's line from Windhoek runs as far as Karasburg, and the connection on to Upington in South Africa is used by occasional luxury trains such as the Shongololo Express.
Wikipedia (German): Bahnstrecke Windhoek to Nakop - Warmbad mission and museum
About 50 km from Karasburg, where the first two European style houses in the country were built. The old German prison, where Bondelswarts prisoners were held, is now a small local history museum, covering how the area's borders shifted over time and who led the community.
The Namibian: Sleepy Warmbad (4 March 2016) - Jacob Morenga memorial, Warmbad
The Warmbad cemetery has a statue of Jacob Morenga, who fought German troops in more than 50 battles and is one of Namibia's national heroes.
Wikipedia: Jacob Morenga - Old buildings of Warmbad
Besides the mission church of 1877 and the pastor's house on the first mission's foundations, Warmbad keeps the remains of the German fort that became the police station, and a garrison hospital and doctor's house from 1908.
Klaus Dierks: Warmbad becomes two hundred years - Warmbad hot springs
The springs that gave Warmbad its name, redeveloped for visitors in the 2000s. A 2016 report found the resort mostly empty and poorly kept, so ask in Karasburg before you go.
The Namibian: Sleepy Warmbad (4 March 2016) - ǁKhauxaǃnas
A walled hilltop settlement east of the Great Karas Mountains, built in the late 1790s by the Orlam Afrikaner clan as a hideout from the Cape authorities, and the oldest planned structure in Namibia. Only a 4x4 gets close, and the last kilometre is on foot.
Wikipedia: ǁKhauxaǃnas - Great Karas Mountains
Schroffenstein, the highest peak of the range, lies about 10 km east of the B1 between Keetmanshoop and Grünau (published heights for it vary). ǁKhauxaǃnas lies on the eastern side of the mountains.
Wikipedia: Great Karas Mountains
Did you know?
- Kalkfontein, the old Afrikaans name, means roughly limestone spring. The town's Khoekhoegowab name is ǀNomsoros. source
- The historian Israel Goldblatt wrote that the 1922 bombing at Guruchas was the first time bombers were used against an African community in southern Africa. The pilots flew from Kalkfontein under orders to stay out of sight on the way. source
- The writer and activist Ruth First called the Bondelswarts shooting "the Sharpeville of the 1920s". source
- The town's weather station records only about 128 mm of rain a year, and summer days pass 40°C while winter nights freeze. source
- Ida Hoffmann, born in Karasburg in 1947, was jailed in the early 1980s for resistance work against South African rule. She later sat in the National Assembly and in 2011 became chair of the Nama Genocide Technical Committee. source
Checked 7 October 2026.
Map of Karasburg
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