In the middle of the Namib desert, in a country where for kilometres there is nothing but sand, stands an oval structure of steel, glass and wood. It is called Desert Whisper. It has a private pool, a telescope and a price of around 1,500 euros a night, for two.

That is 92,000 denars for one night's sleep. Let us not pretend this is a holiday suggestion - this is a suggestion to look. But it is worth looking, because the story behind the building is more interesting than the price.

A room with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, circular in shape, set on a rock with a 180-degree view over the dunes. A kitchen with a fridge and mini-bar, a breakfast bar, air conditioning, internet, a glass shower built straight into the living space, a wooden deck with an outdoor dining table, and a small round pool with sun loungers. And a telescope, which in the Namib is not decoration - this is one of the darkest night skies on the planet, with no light pollution for hundreds of kilometres.

Actor Mario Casas and content creator Melissa Pinto recently stayed there. Her comment: „I never believed a place could make me feel like I was on another planet.” The sentence is exactly what you would expect from an influencer post. The problem is that in the Namib's case it is hard to find a better one.

What is worth knowing about the Namib is that it is not an ordinary desert. It is the oldest desert in the world - around 55 million years old - and the only one where the dunes descend directly into the Atlantic Ocean. Desert Whisper organises balloon flights over the dunes at sunrise, and trips to Sossusvlei and Deadvlei - the site of dead trees hundreds of years old still standing upright in a white clay pan, one of the most photographed scenes in Africa.

And now the part travel pieces never write. Namibia is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world - an enormous area, few people, little water. Luxury tourism there is not a side activity but one of the load-bearing branches of the economy. When one night in a glass room costs 1,500 euros in a country with that profile, that is not a scandal in itself, but it is not a neutral fact either.

Is this a place an actual person from here would go? Probably not, at least not to Desert Whisper. But Namibia does not begin or end with that building - camping in the national parks, the waterholes where elephants come in the evening, and the Skeleton Coast where century-old shipwrecks still sit in the sand are all available for far less. The glass room is the advert. The desert is the story.