  We present for the first time infrared observations of the nearby highly
obscured galaxy Dwingeloo 1 (Dw1), including deep H-band imaging covering a
total of 4.9x4.9 arcmin, together with J and Ks imaging of the central 2.5x2.5
arcmin. We used the small dispersion of the intrinsic infrared colors of spiral
galaxies to determine an infrared H-band extinction of A_H = 0.47+/-0.11 mag
towards Dw1. In using infrared colors, the uncertainties in the reddening and
distance are reduced by a factor of three. The H-band magnitude corrected for
extinction and the infrared Tully-Fisher relation are then used to estimate a
distance modulus of (m-M)_0 = 28.62+/-0.27, and thus a distance of d = 5.3
{+0.7/-0.6} Mpc, which puts Dw1 at the far end of the IC342/Maffei 1 & 2 group.
Our result is largely independent of the nature of the reddening law because we
estimated both the reddening and the distance at the same wavelength range.
