Sesriem Oshana Campsite

A northern floodplain word on a desert campsite

An oshana is a shallow channel that fills when the rains come. Hundreds of them cross the far north of Namibia, running from the Angolan highlands towards Etosha Pan, and a whole region is named after them. The nearest thing at Sesriem is the Tsauchab, which runs only on the rare occasions rain falls in the Naukluft mountains. The Sun Karros website does not say why a row of desert campsites got a floodplain name. Take it as a wish.

The contract behind the pergolas

The campsite came out of a deal that got the head of the state resorts company suspended. Sun Karros signed a joint venture with Namibia Wildlife Resorts in May 2018 and the state company signed on 11 June. On 23 April 2019 the board suspended its managing director, Zelna Hengari, saying she had signed without its approval. She said board and ministry had both agreed. The board started an urgent court application to cancel the contract, then chose to renegotiate, and Dead Valley Lodge was taking guests that July.

Hengari sued over the board’s press statement and asked for N$7.5 million. Judge Boas Usiku dismissed the claim on 19 December 2023, finding that the board had agreed to luxury tented camping at its resorts in principle but had not given her a free hand to sign. In July 2025 the minister, Indileni Daniel, was still asking the board for an update on the agreement.

Sun Karros says it spent more than N$43 million on the lodge and more than N$3 million on the campsite. A New Era report from October 2020 put the campsite at ten sites.

What it fixed

A 4x4 Community thread from late 2017 sets out the old choice. Inside the gate you got the early start and the trees, with shared ablution blocks that one member described as sometimes under strain. Outside at Sossus Oasis you got your own bathroom, no big trees and the sunrise queue. Oshana answers that complaint, with a pergola doing the work of the tree.

The shared blocks next door have a record. One travel writer found hers under two inches of water, and in August 2025 the NWR chairperson put Sesriem on a list of seven resorts ordered to act at once on waste and sewage failings.

The NWR camp had 29 sites in 2012, each under its own camelthorn, and lists 44 now. The “camel” in camelthorn is the giraffe, kameelperd in Afrikaans.

Kek-kek-kek at dusk

In summer, listen when the light goes. Male barking geckos sit at the mouths of their burrows and call for hours, a dry kek-kek-kek. They cannot dig in loose dune sand and want firmer sandy soil or the silt of a dry riverbed, which is what the Sesriem plain offers. No account I could find puts them at the campsite itself. The nearest record is from the Kulala reserve next door, where Heinrich Le Roux spent two months walking about 40 km a night after a season of good rain and wrote it up for Travel News Namibia. He met the calling males first, the web-footed geckos deeper into the night once he reached the sand, and some nights a brown hyaena tagged along. Jackals are the surer night sound. Two unconnected writers describe their calls at the Sesriem camp.

The last sandy stretch

Sleeping inside the gate has been worth less on paper twice in a year. In December 2025 a forum member asked whether a planned self-drive ban on the sand track to Deadvlei would catch Oshana campers, and was told it would. That plan was shelved within days. The ministry announced a shuttle-only rule again for 1 May 2026, Prime Minister Elijah Ngurare said access must be unrestricted, and within days the ministry confirmed that Deadvlei was open to self-drivers in 4x4s. Ask at the gate what the rule is this week.