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Consider the red hartebeest. Few people do. In Etosha National Park, this unassuming, sloping-backed antelope usually plays a supporting role, only taking centre stage when it is being gnawed on by lions. It wasn't until I had one pinned against the bumper of my hire car that I really began to take notice of the species.

I'm sure there's something in the Avis small print that requires you to avoid getting caught up in territorial fights between hartebeest bulls. I had seen the two of them scrapping from a distance and pulled over to watch. Gradually, amid dust and clashing horns, they gravitated towards me, until, like a middleweight on the ropes, the weaker of the two backed up against my vehicle.

I had a ringside seat for what could be a fight to the death. The car rocked with every blow. I could hear both animals wheezing as they took lengthening pauses for breath between shortening bouts of violence. Soon the contest wheeled back to open ground. The rest of the herd cantered around the combatants, with the females taking more than a passing interest; they would undoubtedly end up mating with the victor.

Vehicles sped past, plying blindly between Etosha's waterholes, which attract large concentrations of game during the dry season. Had I been on an organised trip, I would have whizzed past too. But I was alone and had the luxury of being able to linger as long as I pleased, making full use of my personal library of wildlife books ranked on the passenger seat.

The fight ended with a chase, as predicted in the Behaviour Guide to African Mammals by Richard Estes. As the loser galloped away with his tongue flapping, the dominant bull pursued him for a short distance, sending him on his way with a valedictory butt up the rump. I restarted the car and resumed my journey. My plan was to drive across the park from west to east. I departed at dawn from Okaukuejo Rest Camp, where I had spent three nights in a basic chalet.

All three camps in Etosha (Halali and Namutoni are the other two) are government-run and often extremely busy. Okaukuejo abuts an excellent, floodlit waterhole, which can be observed from strategic wooden benches. In the course of one evening, I saw three black rhinos and a very rare brown hyena, but all the while I had to endure a constant cacophony of car alarms, bickering families, and partying overland travellers.

Non-stop, the journey across the park would take four hours, but I was in no hurry. My only deadline was to reach the far gate before the sunset curfew. The limestone terrain was shimmeringly white. The glare off the ground made sunglasses an absolute necessity. Everything was fractured by heat haze. The cloudless sky was tinged purple - a strange consequence of the lime dust.

In these dry winter months, I started each morning zipped-up in a fleece and jacket. As the sun climbed, so the layers came off. By mid-morning I was invariably down to a T-shirt and shorts and the car's air conditioner was in overdrive.

My first visit to Etosha, more than ten years before, had been a busman's holiday. Back then, I was working as a wildlife officer for the Department of National Parks in Wildlife in Malawi. After the lush greenery of that beautiful country, the starkness of northern Namibia provided a jarring contrast. Yet aridity can also be beautiful, and I was instantly smitten. I came away convinced that Etosha was the greatest park I'd ever visited; an opinion that remains unaltered.

In 1876, American trader Gerald McKiernan wrote of Etosha: "All the menageries of the world turned loose would not compare to it." Hyperbole, perhaps, but at one point during my drive I pulled over to scan for game, and, in a slow sweep through binoculars, counted 60 gemsbok, 250 Burchell's zebra, at least 500 springbok, a distant herd of 17 elephant, 5 giraffes, 2 jackals, a frenetic family of mongoose, and a tortoise.

The shelled reptile - my relevant field guide identified it as a Kalahari tent tortoise - set off across the road just as a tour bus came hurtling past. I held my breath as the dust cleared, and was relieved to see the tortoise lying fully retracted but unharmed. Eventually its head and limbs re-emerged and it resumed its plod, reaching the safety of the verge to nibble on springbok droppings. Given the abundance of this particular food source, the tortoise's flirt with death seemed unnecessary, but in this harsh environment risk is an everyday feature of life. For people, too. Rounding a corner, I found a Land Cruiser on its side in the middle of the road. A group of young South Africans were milling beside it, shaken but unhurt. "Couldn't have been doing more than 60 kays, but the back end stepped out on the bend," the driver told me. "Next thing, whole world was sideways. Jeez."

Namibia's gravel roads are notoriously treacherous. It is exceptionally easy to lapse into a skid and turn over, particularly when breaking - and in Etosha you never know what's going to dash out in front of you. I had maintained a cautious pace, and had learnt not to panic when the wheels twitched.

Otherwise, this was a driving paradise. To get to Etosha I first had to travel 500 kilometres from Windhoek, Namibia's stolidly Teutonic capital. On previous visits I had flown, but this time I decided to drive it. Hour after hour, the tarmac road stretched ahead endlessly under an unblemished blue sky. There were few other vehicles.

I was entertained by an eclectic selection of cassettes. In space, nobody can hear you scream, and on Namibia's lonely roads no one can hear you belt out the Red Hot Chili Peppers at full voice. By the time I reached the halfway town of Otjiwarongo, I was hoarse.

Anywhere else, Otjiwarongo would be considered a sleepy backwater. In the Namibian context, it is positively bustling. There was actually traffic at the main junction, and I had to queue for service at the petrol station. I stocked up on beer and biltong (strips of dried meat), but didn't tarry. The gloriously open road beckoned.

As Etosha neared, I was troubled by an intensifying pulse of anxiety. It was ridiculous: I was worried about elephants, a species I have encountered throughout my life, from vehicles, on foot, even from the flimsy cover of a shower cubicle. But I had never driven through elephant country in something as low to the ground as a Toyota Corolla, and Etosha's elephants are the world's tallest, standing more than three-and-a-half metres at the shoulder. (Furthermore, I was a little hazy about how to find reverse should a hasty retreat be required.)

Leaving the capsized South Africans behind, I was soon able to gain a close-up comparison of scale between my modest vehicle and the pachyderms. In a patch of mopane woodland I blundered slap-bang into the middle of a herd. I was suddenly hemmed in, fore and aft. A vast grey flank blocked the sun on the driver's side. Tusks glinted beyond the passenger window.

It was a herd of twenty individuals, including a new-born calf and several adolescents. The tide marks on their legs suggested that they had just departed nearby Helio waterhole. With their thirst sated, they were settling down to a leisurely feed, stripping the roadside trees of leaves.

After five minutes or so, I checked my rear-view and saw that the road behind was clear. I tried to coax the vehicle into reverse, but only succeeded in squealing the clutch. The herd's massive matriarch advanced towards me with her ears spread threateningly. I tried lifting the gear stick: another squeal. Then I pushed it down, and reverse engaged. The narked matriarch was on the cusp of a full-blown charge, but was pacified by my withdrawal and returned to vandalising a mopane tree.

For the rest of the day, I dawdled at a succession of waterholes, sighting a leopard at one and large herds of antelope and giraffe at many of the others. In late afternoon, I watched the sun sink over Etosha salt pan, the dominant feature of the park, stretching to the horizon. It is a true desert. Even in the rains, when the pan turns liquid, the water is much too salty to support vegetation.

At sundown, I exited the easternmost gate and drove the short distance to Mokuti Lodge, where I surrendered the car prior to my early morning flight back to Windhoek.

"Any problems?" asked the Avis man, giving the vehicle the once over. "No elephant dents? No lion scratches? No rhino-horn holes?"

He ticked his manifest and I handed over the keys, electing not to draw attention to the sweaty smudge on the bonnet.

Like most people, he failed to consider the red hartebeest.

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