Any journey · Driving Namibia
Driving Palmwag to Windhoek
574 km and about 6h 42m on the C40, C38, then the B1, via Kamanjab, Outjo, Otjiwarongo and 1 more. 115 km of that is gravel — 20% of the drive — which is why it takes longer than the distance suggests.
Rather have a driver?
Book a private transfer for this route. The fare is fixed for the whole vehicle before you commit.
N$5,150 per vehicle
What the road is like
- Distance
- 574 km
- Driving time
- 6h 42m
- On gravel
- 115 km
- Roads
- C40 · C38 · B1
High clearance is wise on the gravel section, though a careful driver in a normal car manages it in the dry.
The time above is not a map-app estimate. It is computed at 100 km/h on tar and 65 km/h on gravel with a rest stop included — the speeds a careful driver actually sustains over a whole leg, tested against published driving times.
What it costs to be driven
A fixed price for the whole vehicle — the same whether one of you travels or the car is full — agreed before you commit.
The two directions are not the same price, and the N$3,700 between them is real rather than a rounding artefact. A car finishing its day at Windhoek can pick up another fare; one sent out to Palmwag usually drives home empty, and that empty return is in the fare. If your itinerary can run this leg in the Palmwag-to-Windhoek direction, it is the cheaper way round.
Worth driving yourself?
This is a long one: 6h 42m with 115 km of gravel in it, which is most of a day and all of your concentration. It is the kind of leg people hand over — not because they cannot drive it, but because arriving with the afternoon still intact is worth more than the saving.
Getting to either end
What it takes to reach each of these places from every gateway, not just from this one.
Legs that join this one
Every figure on this page is computed from our road network model — the length and surface of each segment this route crosses — rather than copied from a map app. How we compute our numbers.