Town · Otjozondjupa, Namibia
Tsumkwe
A small village deep in Juǀʼhoansi San country in the far east, with fuel, a lodge and the baobabs, seasonal pans and village visits of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy all around it.
Short answer
Tsumkwe is in Otjozondjupa, Namibia. This page lists 2 places to stay and 1 places to eat and drink. The nearest park with an entry fee on this site is Khaudum National Park, about 94 km away, where international adults pay from N$200.
- Places to stay
- 2
- Eat and drink
- 1
- Park fee nearby: Khaudum National Park
- US$12 €11 · N$200about 94 km away
- Where
- Otjozondjupa, Namibia19.59°S 20.50°E
In and around Tsumkwe
3 places listedWhere to stay in Tsumkwe 2
- 19.60°S 20.50°EHotelTucsin Tsumkwe Country Lodge+264 61 374 750
- 19.43°S 20.52°ECampsiteKlein Dobe
Bars and pubs 1
- Fiveline BarBar
Tsumkwe (Tjumǃkui in Juǀʼhoan) is a small village (about 500 people in a 2012 count, the latest figure I can find) in the far east of Otjozondjupa, some 60 km short of the Botswana border. It began as a government post in 1959 and is now the way into the Nyae Nyae Conservancy, home of the Juǀʼhoansi San. People come to spend time with San families in their villages, to see the huge baobabs and the rain-filled pans, and to fuel up before Khaudum National Park.
Getting there
From Grootfontein take the tarred B8 north for 57 km, then turn east onto the C44, a gravel road that runs all the way into the village. Tsumkwe is about 300 km from Grootfontein. A 2019/20 study found too little traffic to justify tarring it. An ordinary car copes with the C44 and the long gravel route up from Gobabis, but the minor roads around Tsumkwe are deep, soft sand and need a real 4x4.
The Dobe border post into Botswana is 53 km east on a sand track, open 07:30 to 16:30. Wikivoyage says only Namibian and Botswana citizens may use it, yet NBC News reported in 2023 that it mostly serves tourists and locals. Check with Home Affairs before you plan a route through.
When to go
August to October is best for animals, when the bush is dry. Elephants roam the whole area, even into the village. Rains come roughly December to March. The Nyae Nyae and Khebi pans fill, and more than 10,000 birds gather on them, flamingos and wattled cranes among them. Expect heat above 37°C in November and December and frost on some May and June nights.
What to do
The Nyae Nyae Conservancy covers more than 9,000 km² around the village and in 1998 became the first communal area in Namibia declared a conservancy. Juǀʼhoan villages offer tracking trips, gathering walks for food and medicinal plants, and storytelling and song around the fire. Ask about these, and book the village campsites at Makuri, Djokhoe and Xamsa, at the G!hunku Craft Shop in Tsumkwe. The Baobab Trail links those campsites on a three to four day hike.
The Holboom, a giant baobab with a viewing platform, is 12 km out on the road to Botswana. The Dorslandboom, a baobab dated to about 2,100 years old where the Dorsland Trekkers camped on their way to Angola, is off the track towards Khaudum. The Nyae Nyae Pan is 20 km south.
The Living Hunter’s Museum at ǁXaǀoba closed in January 2026 and a new one is planned, so ask locally.
Good to know
Tsumkwe has fuel and a general dealer, but bread, milk and eggs are rarely in stock, so shop in Grootfontein. The CDC recommends malaria tablets for Otjozondjupa, and NaTHNaC rates it high risk December to April, so see a travel clinic. Pay the conservancy in cash; gifts of food or clothes don’t replace payment. Ask the headman (n!ore kxao) before you enter a village or camp, and ask before any photo. Heading south or east you cross the Red Line, where meat is confiscated.
History and culture
Tsumkwe sits in the middle of the land the Juǀʼhoansi San have lived on for thousands of years, but the village itself is young: a government post started in 1959, which became the centre of the apartheid homeland of Bushmanland and then an army recruiting ground. Knowing that recent past explains a lot of what you see here, from the scattered villages to the conservancy the Juǀʼhoansi now run.
- Before the 1950s
The Juǀʼhoansi lived across the Nyae Nyae area as hunter-gatherers, moving between permanent and seasonal waterholes on both sides of today's Botswana border. Women's gathering provided most of the food, and men hunted with poisoned arrows. source
- 1951
The American Marshall family made the first of their expeditions to the Juǀʼhoansi of Nyae Nyae, escorted by Claude McIntyre, a South West African civil servant. They spent six weeks with a band at Gautscha, a permanent waterhole about 27 km south of where Tsumkwe stands now, and John Marshall went back to film there in 1952, 1955 and 1958. source
- 1959
McIntyre came back as the first Bushman Affairs Commissioner and set up a government post at Tjumǃkui, where one band already lived, because it was central to the other settlements. He promised gardens, goats and protection from Herero cattle owners moving onto San land. Four bands, more than 100 people, settled there in the early 1960s, and by the end of the decade about 700 Juǀʼhoansi lived at the post. source
- 1970
Under apartheid South Africa drew the borders of Bushmanland, a homeland (an ethnic reserve) for the San, around Tsumkwe. Well-watered land to the north and south went to Kavangoland and Hereroland East, three of the seven permanent waterholes on the Namibian side of Nyae Nyae were lost, and more and more people crowded in around Tsumkwe. source
- 1978 to 1981
In July 1978, during the war against SWAPO (the South West Africa People's Organisation, the liberation movement), the South African army opened a base at Luhebo to recruit San soldiers. Soon after, a base about 50 km west of Tsumkwe became the centre of the new 36 Battalion of Namibian San, and by September 1981 140 Tsumkwe men, 47 percent of those aged 15 to 45, had joined the army. source
- 1981
The Nyae Nyae Development Foundation was founded to support the Juǀʼhoansi of the Nyae Nyae area in what was then eastern Bushmanland. It still works with them today and now backs the conservancy as well. source
- 21 March 1990
After the armed struggle SWAPO launched in 1966, which grew into the wider South African Border War, Namibia became independent from South Africa on 21 March 1990. source
- 1998
Nyae Nyae became the first communal area in Namibia to be declared a conservancy, so the people who live there now run their own wildlife and plant resources and share in what they earn. It covers more than 9,000 km² and borders Khaudum National Park. source
- Languages
- Tsumkwe Constituency is the one part of Otjozondjupa where San languages lead. At the 2023 census, of 14,347 people counted in households, 3,367 mainly spoke Juǀʼhoan and 3,291 ǃKung at home, with smaller numbers speaking other San languages. Otjiherero was the largest single language, with 3,933 speakers. The ǀ, ǃ and ǂ in Juǀʼhoan names are click sounds. source
- How villages work
- The Juǀʼhoansi never had a paramount chief. Decisions were made by talking until everyone agreed, and most are still made by the community as a whole. Each village has a headman, the n!ore kxao, and visitors are expected to ask him before entering or camping. source
- Crafts and plants
- Juǀʼhoan women make jewellery, and crafts of wood and ostrich egg are sold in the villages and at the G!hunku Craft Shop in Tsumkwe. Harvesters dig devil's claw, a root now sought by herbalists for its anti-inflammatory effect, taking secondary roots from one side only and leaving the main root so the plant grows back. source
- Hunting
- The San of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy are the only ones of their group still officially allowed to hunt in the old way, with bows and poisoned arrows, digging out springhares and snaring birds. source
For American visitors: The Marshalls of Cambridge, Massachusetts, went to Nyae Nyae in 1951 and returned many times over the next two decades: Laurence Marshall, a co-founder of Raytheon, his wife Lorna, who wrote The ǃKung of Nyae Nyae (1976), and their children John and Elizabeth. source
For American visitors: John Marshall's film The Hunters, about four Juǀʼhoan men tracking a giraffe in the Nyae Nyae area, was shot on a Smithsonian and Harvard Peabody Museum expedition in 1952 and 1953. It was added to the US National Film Registry in 2003. source
For German visitors: The researchers who took Tsumkwe trackers to the French Ice Age caves in 2013 were German: Tilman Lenssen-Erz of the University of Cologne's Research Centre Africa and Andreas Pastoors of the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann. The team planned to report its findings at a press conference at the University of Cologne. source
For German visitors: The Living Culture Foundation Namibia, which supports the Living Museums including the one planned near Tsumkwe, is a German-Namibian association founded in Tangermünde. A documentary about life at the Hunter's Museum near Tsumkwe, made by two University of Wuppertal students, premiered there in September 2025. source
Main sights in Tsumkwe
5- Holboom
A giant baobab in a cluster of baobabs 12 km from Tsumkwe on the road to Botswana, with a viewing platform close by. These trees matter to the Juǀʼhoansi, so keep tents and vehicles off the roots.
Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia, tourism in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy - Dorslandboom
The baobab south of Khaudum National Park, about 2,100 years old and thought to be the oldest tree in Namibia, where Dorsland Trekkers camped in 1883 and cut the year into the trunk. German soldiers passing in 1891 added their own date and three names. It has fallen over but is still growing.
Wikipedia: Dorsland tree - Nyae Nyae Pan
A wide depression about 20 km south of Tsumkwe that holds water after heavy rain and is known for the flocks of flamingos that come when it does.
Wikipedia (German): Nyae-Nyae-Pfanne - G!hunku Craft Shop
The conservancy's craft shop in Tsumkwe sells Juǀʼhoan jewellery and crafts and is where you book village campsites and activities.
Nyae Nyae Development Foundation of Namibia, tourism in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy - Living Hunter's Museum (closed)
The Living Hunter's Museum at ǁXaǀoba, where Juǀʼhoansi showed visitors the old hunting life, closed in January 2026. The Living Culture Foundation is now working with ǃAmace Nǃaici, a Juǀʼhoan guide, and the people of Kaptein Pos on a new one about 30 km north-west of Tsumkwe.
Living Culture Foundation Namibia, the development of a new Living Hunter's Museum close to Tsumkwe (12 March 2026)
Did you know?
- Tsumkwe Constituency covers 28,491 km² and had 15,357 people in 2023, about one person for every two square kilometres, the emptiest constituency in Otjozondjupa. source
- The Dorslandboom, a baobab off the track towards Khaudum, has been dated by radiocarbon to about 2,100 years old, which puts it among the oldest trees in Africa. Dorsland Trekkers camped under it in the late 1800s on their way to Angola. source
- In July 2013 three Juǀʼhoan trackers from Tsumkwe and the villages near it flew to Europe to help researchers read the Ice Age footprints in the caves of Ariège in the French Pyrenees. The scientists hoped the trackers could tell whether the people who left them were in a hurry, ill or carrying something. source
- The Aha Hills, which straddle the Botswana border east of Tsumkwe, are about 700 million years old and a rare landmark in the flat Nyae Nyae bush. There is a community campsite at their foot. source
- When the Nyae Nyae and Khebi pans fill in the rains (December to March) they draw more than 10,000 birds, including flamingos and wattled cranes. source
Checked 7 October 2026.
Map of Tsumkwe
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