Kolmanskop

DesertsǁKaras,Namibia

A German diamond boomtown the Namib is filling room by room — dunes cresting across a ballroom floor, corridors knee-deep in sand, the paint still up.

September·Edge of season

Sep

September is the pivot back: the southerly begins to rebuild after the winter lull, and this is the greyest, cloudiest month on the coast. The town stays fully open and the rooms still hold their ripples early, before the gale takes over.

Year-round The sand-drowned rooms, the pale green, blue and peach walls and the painted friezes above the doorframes stand every month; what shifts is the wind, the light angle and the coastal chill.

Kolmanskop was built on diamonds and emptied by them, and the Namib has been moving in ever since. It stands in the desert of southern Namibia, inside a diamond area still off limits, and it went up after a railway worker clearing the line found a stone in 1908. Within a few years three hundred and fifty people were living on the richest ground on earth, in a town with a ballroom, a hospital and an ice factory that delivered a block to every door each morning. There is no fresh water for hundreds of kilometres in any direction. Every drop of it came across the desert by rail. Then richer fields turned up to the south, and the families went. What stayed behind was the wind. A strong southerly runs off this coast most of the year, pushing sand through every broken window and open door. The filling has never finished. One long corridor keeps its green wainscot and its row of white doorframes with nothing under your feet but rippled dune. In the larger rooms the sand does not just cover the floor, it crests: a slope climbs to window-sill height and slides down the far side, every ripple picked out by the arched windows. The photograph everyone comes for is a doorway between a pale-green room and a blue one, with a hand-painted fruit frieze still up over the frame. A tongue of sand lies across the threshold, smooth only in the first hour, before you or anyone else has walked on it. Where the drift has banked to a sill, you lean into the opening and the sand indoors runs straight out to meet the sand outside. From the edge of the site you see it as it is: a few dozen roofs, a rusted mine shed and a line of workers' quarters on a plain that runs empty to the horizon. The name came before the diamonds. A transport driver left his ox wagon on the rise opposite when a sandstorm caught him, and the sand that stopped him never stopped arriving.

Worth knowing

Good to know

A permit is required, sold in Lüderitz or at the gate. The pricier photographers' permit is the one worth having: it lets you in from sunrise, hours before the standard morning opening.
Dress for a cold coast, not a hot desert. Winter mornings here start near 11°C with the Benguela wind behind them, and the afternoon rarely passes the low twenties.
Take one of the free morning guided tours for the story, then double back alone. Most visitors are gone by midday, when the buildings empty out and go quiet.
The fine sand gets into everything — carry a sealed bag for cameras and lenses, and wear closed shoes, because you will be walking up and down dunes indoors.

Things to do

1
Photograph the painted doorway at sunrise, before visitors' footprints cross the sand
Come in on the photographers' permit at sunrise and head straight for the doorway between the pale-green and blue rooms, while the tongue of sand across the threshold is still smooth. A hand-painted fruit frieze survives above the frame; line up your shot before the morning tours track the floor and the ripples are gone.
2
Walk a corridor whose floor is now a dune
The long corridor keeps its green wainscot and its row of white doorframes, but the floor underfoot is rippled sand. In the biggest rooms the sand does not merely cover the floor, it crests: a dune climbs to window-sill height and slides down the far side, every ripple picked out by the arched windows.
3
Sight through a half-buried window to the next house
Find a room where the sand has banked up to the sill and lean into the opening, where the drift indoors runs straight out to meet the drift outside. Line up the gap so the next house frames up in the same white glare, inside and outside collapsed into one continuous slope.
4
See the whole town adrift on the plain
From the edge of the site the town reads as it really is: a few dozen roofs, a rusted mine shed and a line of workers' quarters. All of it is set down on a gravel plain that runs empty to the horizon. Barely 350 people lived out here.

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Nearby

216 km