Most of the tourists in Namibia travel the country by car… and most of those do an individual trip with a rental vehicle. Bus tours with mini busses as well as big cross-country busses are possible. Hitchhiking is not recommended throughout the country and the use of “Ovambo-Taxis” is very often not a safe means of transport. Publick transport in Namibia is mostly used by the lower-income population, however, there are options for tourists as well.
StarLine Passenger Service is the name of TransNamib’s (the state-owned railway company) passenger service. Due to a lack of maintenance of the railway tracks (actually some are more than a 100 years old) and the fact that they are build as narrow-gauge, using a train is time consuming. The StarLine only travels with about 30 km/h and covers the far north (Ondangwa and Tsumeb), Walvis Bay and Swakopmund (central coast) as well as Keetmanshoop and Karasburg (South) and Namibia’s capital Windhoek in the centre. The current train schedule can be accessed at www.transnamib.com.na
The Desert Express was TransNamib’s luxury tourist train running once a week from Windhoek to Swakopmund and return. It took the train 22 hours per direction and included two off-train excursions. It nowadays does the trip on a full-charter basis only.
The Intercape ist the fastest, convenient and safest ground transport option in Namibia. The Mainliner and Sleepliner busses ru throughout Namibia and even to neighbouring countries. They are affordable and quite luxurious. More info at www.intercape.co.za
Scheduled, reliable and safe mini shuttle busses operate mainly between Windhoek and Swakopmund. An example would be Town Hoppers (www.namibiashuttle.com). Rates per direction are around N$ 270 per person.
Charter planes are readily available from Windhoek and Swakopmund, however, much cheaper are the scheduled flights currently offered by Air Namibia. Rumours have it, that Westair will start scheduled flights in Namibia in due course (as of December 2017). Scheduled charter flights are offered by Wilderness Air (www.wilderness-air.com).
