Sands of Time.

Say, do you come here often?

Sesriem, Namibia – We queued along the crease between light and dark as the sun mounted its assault on the sky.

We had arrived early to climb Dune 45 – purported to be the second-tallest dune in the world, behind nearby Dune 7 – in Namib-Naukluft National Park. Looking around later, doubt in that statistic crept in like the shadows that fell onto each of the sand's curves.

Sometimes you have to take these 'facts' with a grain of sand. Still, the dune is 80-metres high, and composed five-million-year-old sand.

Either way, it was hilly beach as far as you could see. The sand was soft and cool on the feet, but each step forward led me to sink anew as we hiked the knife-edge to the summit. Soon, my legs themselves felt like sand. I had become one with the mountain.

The hourglass, filled on the way up, emptied in an instant as I promptly ran straight back down.

As the temperature climbed, we carried-on to Sossuvlei, making our way to a 400,000-year-old dried lake bed now carpeted by bleached clay. The gnarled remains of blackened trees twisted hauntingly from cracks in the ground that mirrored their grotesque – yet beautiful – form.

History, preserved; the hourglass tipped for another day.