The world’s tallest sand dunes are in the Namibian desert — and it was here, at Dune 45, that I would see heaven and earth collide with the rising sun. The Namib-Naukluft National Park is the largest ecological preserve in Africa measuring about 19,300 square miles (50,000 km²). It is a picture of beauty and elegance: golden-red sands shining down upon the barren earth below. In its center beckons a magical oasis: Sossusvlei.

Vlei means “shallow depression filled with water” in the Afrikaans language, which has been recognized as the national language since 1990, when the country gained independence from South Africa. But the Sossusvlei pan is only wet during a good rainy season, when the Tsauchab River manages to infiltrate the dune belt from the west, then is stopped by a barrier of dunes, preventing it from flowing any further.

Sossusvlei is a shallow depression sometimes filled with water during the rainy season.

The highest dune in the Sossusvlei region is called Big Daddy; it rises more than 1000 feet (300 m) high, at a 45-degree angle. The desert’s most popular and accessible feature is known as Dune 45, which reaches more than 560 feet (170 m).

It’s unromantically named after the distance in kilometers from the fairly small — 0.6 mile (1 km) long and about 98 feet (30 m) deep — yet beautiful Sesriem Canyon.

I was on a guided 21-day overland safari from Cape Town, South Africa, to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. There were 23 people in our group, and we were just four days into our journey when we were told that we would be seeing the sunrise over the desert the next morning. We had no idea what we were about to experience.

We were staying at Solitaire, appropriately named since the “village” consists merely of a gas station with store and is run by only one man. Solitaire exists only to service those heading to the dunes or the canyon.

After an hour’s drive by converted truck — the preferred vehicle for group safaris in southern Africa — we arrived at Dune 45 for a 5 a.m. start to our climb. We needed to reach the top by sunrise ... and looking at the dune’s height and curves from ground level, this seemed an almost impossible feat.