Need to know
Rooms
12 lodges.
Check–Out
10am. Earliest check-in, 2pm. Both can be flexible subject to availability.
More details
Rates include breakfast, lunch and dinner, all drinks (excluding premium wines and champagne, two safari game drives a day and a daily-changing programme of activities).
Also
The hotel’s welcome ritual involves burning myrrh resin and giving you a string bracelet with Our Habitas’ logo. And for more Namibian craftsmanship to take home, stop by the art market at reception, where you can pick up unique pieces, such as jewellery made using ostrich eggshell, grewia flava and pumpkin seeds. On check-out day, the bushmen usually give a talk on what the products and artworks are made of and discuss their cultural significance.
At the hotel
Deck with pouffes and a fire pit, garden, library, lounge, board games, a small handicrafts boutique, free WiFi. In rooms: bathrobes, a day-bed, local handicrafts, air-conditioning.
Our favourite rooms
Each room is the same – facing sunset, glass walls all round (all the better for admiring nature’s glory, but can be screened off with canvas coverings), local handicrafts, throw pillows, rugs and a day-bed, plus plumbing – and in the middle of this 51-hectare wilderness there are no unsightly pylons or prefab flats popping up to spoil the view.
Poolside
The freeform, natural-looking rock-edged pool, with a handful of loungers to one side, is set into the main lodge’s wooden deck atop a vast bluff – so you can even safari as you swim (although the animals don’t tend to wander up to these parts too often). However, little furry dassies (a small gopher-type creature curiously most closely related to the elephant) frolic unabashedly here.
Spa
Namibian ancestral practices put cultural cachet into spa spoiling here. Treatments – being caressed with a calabash, coated in the Himba people’s famed red-ochre cream and myrrh oil, or massaged with quartz crystals or hot stones – use essential oils infused with the likes of locally grown baobab, Kalahari melon seed, ximenia, marula, manketti, myrrh and more, some grown in the hotel’s own garden.
Packing tips
Bring the requisite safari kit: neutrally hued clothes, binoculars, camera etc. And leave your inhibitions at home, you’ll enjoy your time here all the more if you do.
Also
There are cinema screenings (sometimes outdoor depending on weather) held each week.
Children
Small critters make easier prey, so Our Habitas Namibia is for over-12s only.
Sustainability efforts
The founder of hip hotel group Our Habitas created this stay aiming to inspire a sense of community, and it seems he’s followed through: guests are gently encouraged to dive into activities such as bush yoga and meditation or dance, and guides hail from various parts of the country, giving a bigger picture to game drives and dropping cultural knowledge alongside animal facts. This used to be a hunting lodge, so it’s heartwarming to see it take on a ‘look, but don’t shoot’ approach; more animals are being added too, to further conservation efforts. And, Our Habitas looks after humans: its Rise initiative helps provide jobs and hospitality training for the local community.
