The 2020 Land Rover Defender Kaokoland Expedition: Epic Images Only

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Image for article titled The 2020 Land Rover Defender Kaokoland Expedition: Epic Images Only

If you didn’t get enough 2020 Land Rover Defender eye candy from the images in my shakedown story, come paw through this slideshow of pics taken by the talented Nick Dimbleby and Land Rover’s photo team at the vehicle’s launch expedition in Africa.

Land Rover did a multi-prong product launch, flying a bunch of folks including myself to Namibia a few months ago for overland testing, and others to England where the Defender’s built and torture-tested.

I included as many good frames as I could in my feature story that is, again, freshly published on Jalopnik. However, it seemed like a waste to let the surplus of images captured on the trip to languish on hard drives. So we might as well enjoy them.

You do have to click through to see all of them, but hopefully, that makes these high-rez captures easier to load in small batches.

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Namibia is the second least-dense country on Earth, so light pollution is minimal making for good stargazing.

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Van Zyl’s Pass is a lot steeper than it looks in photos. Isn’t everything?

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Just inland from the sands of Skeleton Coast are long, windy rivers that the rovers had to cross and run through for hours.

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North of Opuwo, the terrain is very rocky with a few small sprouted trees. Bigger vegetation lives near riverbeds. In this area, semi-nomatic farmers and their livestock follow naturally growing food sources. Also: Ostriches live here.

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Marienfluss is a wide-open area with sands of yellow and orange. The surface here is fun to drive on: Soft enough to slide on, but hardpacked enough so it’s not too hard to find traction.

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Near the village of Purros, there’s, well, a lot of nothing really. Beautiful nothing.

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Skeleton Coast is a national park in Namibia that’s generally closed to visitors. We were able to secure entry with permission from Park Warden Asante Namugongo who rode through with us.

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You found the end of the slideshow! How heroic. For your efforts: Here’s a pic I thought would make a cool desktop background. Don’t forget to read my feature story to find out how the Defender did in these conditions.