Place to stay · Sesriem
AndBeyond Sossusvlei Desert Lodge
Ten glass-fronted suites and one family suite on a private desert reserve next to NamibRand, with plunge pools, skylights over the beds and an observatory. Run by andBeyond.
This is andBeyond’s lodge in the Namib, set on the 12,715 hectare Sossusvlei Private Desert Reserve, which borders the NamibRand Nature Reserve and the Namib-Naukluft National Park. The suites are spread out along an escarpment, and the buildings are stone, glass and steel. It’s a top-end, all-inclusive stay, and the appeal is the space, the dark sky and the fact that everything is arranged for you.
What to expect
There are ten suites for two people (about 130 m² each) and one Star Dune Suite for up to four, which is two en-suite rooms joined by a lounge. Every suite has air conditioning, a plunge pool, a shaded veranda and a skylight above the bed that opens for stargazing, and the ten standard suites have a fireplace in the lounge. The lodge sits on the edge of the NamibRand International Dark Sky Reserve, and on some evenings a visiting astronomer runs sessions at the on-site observatory.
Stays are all-inclusive. Meals, most drinks, laundry and guided activities are part of it, including one morning trip into Sossusvlei, a dune walk on the reserve, a scenic drive, rock and San heritage outings and an ATV outing to look for small desert creatures. You can also go out alone on e-bikes or two mapped hiking routes, which is unusual for andBeyond. Helicopter flights, hot air ballooning and spa treatments cost extra.
Practical details
- Book through andBeyond’s travel team or a travel agent. The lodge has its own airstrip, and transfers from it are included.
- Park entry and landing fees are not part of the package.
- Children under 8 can’t join lodge activities. Quad bikes on the ATV outing are for guests 16 and older. Childminding is available.
Good to know
Drones are not allowed. andBeyond says the solar power, rainwater harvesting and grey water recycling keep the lodge’s footprint low, and you can ask for a tour of how it works.
Last updated 7 October 2026. Sources: andBeyond, Sossusvlei Desert Lodge, andBeyond, Sossusvlei Desert Lodge, about, andBeyond, Sossusvlei Desert Lodge, accommodation, andBeyond, Sossusvlei Desert Lodge, experiences, andBeyond, Sossusvlei Desert Lodge brochure (PDF), Wikipedia, NamibRand Nature Reserve.
The astronomer's gecko and a zebra called Hotspur
In the rainy season of 2006 the lodge’s astronomer, a retired biologist called Miles Paul, photographed a tiny banded gecko he could not name. The manager, Peter Dunning, sent the picture to Bill Branch, the reptile man at the museum in Port Elizabeth. Branch could not name it either, so he came to look. He caught his first adult here on 21 September 2006 and returned the following April, when Vernon Swanepoel from the lodge helped him find more. Some were out on the rocky slopes at night, others in the stonework of the boundary walls and chalets. One hatchling was picked up off a chalet floor. Every specimen in the 2011 description came from this one spot, and the name it got is on our NamibRand page.
The stargazer who filled in the forms
One of the lodge’s visiting astronomers, George Tucker, a retired American physics professor, had done six stints here when he wrote to the International Dark-Sky Association asking whether the reserve could qualify. He put the case to the reserve on 27 May 2011, the board agreed eight days later, and the Gold Tier listing came in 2012.
The astronomer is not always there. A guest in October 2016 found nobody in residence. In October 2021 the telescope was away for repair and a visitor ended up sharing his own with staff and other guests. Two guests, in November 2014 and August 2018, found a bright moon had cut what they could see, and a third warned that at full moon the skylight over the bed floods the room with light at two in the morning. Book around the new moon.
Zebra that drink in the dark
Morris Gosling, who studies mountain zebra by their stripes, kept a camera trap on the lodge waterhole from February to December 2011. Out of more than 10,000 pictures, 364 were good enough to tell one mountain zebra from another, and they came to 24 animals. Every visit was at night, which is how the species drinks when people are close by.
Then there was Hotspur, a mountain zebra stallion who lived with a plains zebra herd. In December 2011 his companions walked him north to this waterhole, some 25 km from where he had last been seen around Keerweder.
Oryx are as good as certain. Among guests who logged sightings with Expert Africa, one in five reported a spotted hyaena, slightly fewer a brown one, and none a cat. Cats do happen: guests in January 2011 watched five cheetahs on a kill in the evening light and, on their last drive, a leopard looking down from a boulder hill at sunset. That is one family’s account.
A giraffe on the ceiling
The farm is Vreemdelingspoort. About 45 minutes’ walk from the lodge is the Black Table Mountain shelter, where Maria Wilén began recording the rock art in 2011 as a student project for the archaeology department at Uppsala University. The piece she singled out is a large, lifelike giraffe painted on the underside of a flat rock near an occasional watercourse. One guest in 2018 came home saying the drawings were 700 years old.
Out of NamibRand
When this was CC Africa’s Sossusvlei Mountain Lodge, the kitchen waste went to Maltahöhe by truck every week. The drivers came back saying children were picking through it for food. The lodge opened a feeding scheme there on 25 January 2005, for 48 children at first and 108 by 2006.
The buildings date from the mid-1990s and were reworked over nine months in 2019. That September, after two years of failed talks, andBeyond resigned from the NamibRand association. So the lodge whose astronomer got NamibRand its dark sky status now sits beside the reserve, about half an hour from Sesriem.
