Lüderitz and Kolmanskop

Sand lies knee deep in the rooms, sloping from window to door. Scraps of wallpaper on the walls, a bathtub half drifted over, and through one doorway you look across a dune to the sea. Kolmanskop is not a ruin falling apart, it is a place the desert is reclaiming room by room.

From Sesriem, another source says about 500 km

467 km

First diamond find near Grasplatz

1908

Mined between 1908 and 1913

4.69 million carats

End of mining

1930

Lüderitz to Kolmanskop

10 km

The distance figures do not agree. One source gives about 467 kilometres for Lüderitz to Sesriem, another about 500 kilometres as the shortest link from Lüderitz to Sossusvlei. The finest route runs on the B4 to Aus, then the C13 and the D707 along the Tiras mountains and the NamibRand, and finally the C27 to Sesriem. We found no documented driving time for the whole run, but it takes a day whichever way you cut it.

Kolmanskop lies about ten kilometres east of Lüderitz, though one source says 20. The settlement was founded in 1905 once the railway reached it, and in 1908 the railway workers August Stauch and Zacharias Lewala found the first diamonds near Grasplatz station. Between 1908 and 1913 some 4.69 million carats came out of the sand. Mining ended in 1930, and the last residents were gone by the 1960s. Kolmanskop is a museum today, open mornings with a ticket and outside those hours with a photography permit; the southern part still belongs to the restricted diamond area.

• Kolmanskop in detail: kolmanskop.de

Time needed

a day of driving each way, two nights there

Cost

entry to Kolmanskop, photography permit charged separately

When

mornings for the tour, early for the light in the houses

From Sesriem

467.0 km

Our tipIf you want to photograph Kolmanskop, get the permit that covers the hours outside normal opening. In the morning you will otherwise share every doorway with the same group of people.