A symphony of red and gold'

Waking with the jackals, sleeping under the stars and galloping to the world's edge in a "true wilderness", Eleanor Jones experiences the trip of a lifetime in the Namibian desert

HOW do you describe the indescribable? It's almost as if you're drunk; drunk on sun and sand and space and speed.

Flying on fierce heat and the dry desert wind, in an immense emptiness where nothing matters but this place and these horses and these people.

The Namibia Wild Horses Ride is not for the faint-hearted - "Africa is not for sissies," says lead guide and company boss Andrew Gillies - you have to be happy to accelerate, spread out across endless plains with 14 other riders and 19 other horses, ride for five hours over dunes without a promise of shade and cover some 280km in seven days.

But if you are, the reward is an experience like no other. This isn't hacking round a desert block, it's riding with a purpose and a destination, from one camp to the next. This is one of the promises on which the Namibia Horse Safari Company's 30-year reputation is built; with the experience of the desert, the beauty of the surroundings, the speed, the space and the horses.

Most of us will be familiar with riding at pace in groups, but this is that multiplied by a thousand; without fences or hedges or breakwaters, with space for "proper riding", and the chance to let it all go with no worry about how to stop.

"It's like a riding school - but as far as the horizon," Andrew says. "The desert makes these patterns, like a swimming pool, that stretch as far as you can see, and you can spread out and go like the clappers. It's bedlam; loose horses, people whooping it up. It's fantastic. I love being out in the true wilderness, on a horse and sharing it with people."

DAYS on the ride follow a similar pattern; you're woken as the stars' brilliance starts to fade and the sky lightens round the edges once by jackals calling to each other as they ringed the campsite - then it's essentially eat, sleep, ride, repeat, for seven days on the trot.