The Middle World, between the Modern World as we know it, and the Wilderness, is rich in many idiosyncrasies, little marvels, charms and surprises. Here are a few that I encounter as I travel through on my safaris into the wilderness. You can watch the video here: Enjoy!...
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This story captures the final days and hours in the run-up to an extended solo safari into the African wilderness. It has a twist too, about solving a serious unforseen problem with the safari vehicle. Enjoy!...
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A video to provide some idea of the preliminary feasibility investigation and planning that goes into a safari into the African Wilderness. It covers considerations like routes and travel duration, river crossing points, border crossings, fuel and water availability to establish if a vehicle safari into the target area will be feasible. You can watch the video here. Enjoy!...
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Check the video below for an invitation to wander with me through the African wilderness on my latest solo African safari, this time into the South-east of Angola. Enjoy!...
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There were no dry streams or other signs of water around. Just the seep. It was pushed up by some mysterious force from below; gently, so that it was enough for the few zebra, hartebeest and sable and the lone kudu bull whose tracks said they regularly showed up – and for the solitary elephant bull that had left his big pale smudges, and for the old dagga boy. He had been here less than an hour ago, his saucer-sized prints told us. He had waded in, drank with muzzle stretched to the cleanest spot, then splashed deeper and...
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I stare down at the mirror-smooth surface of the pool with its eclectic decorations of fallen leaves. They could mean almost anything I want them to. The water is clear as polished glass, right down to the bottom. A few tadpoles cling to the edge like a row of suckling piglets. It is almost a choreographed picture of stillness and peace. Clean water that we don’t need to dig for, or that is not hoof-churned soup with bits of dung floating in it, is rare. The swathes of shade around it from trees growing verdant in the moisture, is...
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My four companions on this sojourn, ready for the day’s trek. “The day’s trek,” would be a meander in a general direction, say north, but easily deviated from to investigate bush phenomena we might notice, or to search for water, or to explore stories we might pick up from local bush people, and the like. On the right is Jacqui, whom I recruited as bush medium. He spoke a few words of English and a few of Fanagolo. Fanagolo is a pidgin language based on Zulu that developed on the South African gold mines as a kind of lingua...
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You can listen to the voice narrative, or read through the text below. Enjoy! The young male lion’s skull lay forlorn on the edge of a hollow. It had once held water, but now it has dried to a desolation of cracked mud. Around, a calcific flat stretched away in scrub-mottled grey to a thin blur of trees on the horizon. It was a bitter picture. I looked around. Nowhere on the bleached surface could I see even a single bone from the rest of the skeleton. Had the scavengers felt awkward about desecrating the countenance of...
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You can listen to the voice recodrding, or read through the text below. Enjoy! We were not surprised when we caught the faint babble of men on the breeze. We had started picking up human signs a day earlier – a few tracks, a sapling stripped of bark to tie down something, a little glass jar that once contained Vicks Vaporub… We had to be within a day or two from one of those lone villages in the bush. We followed the sound and found a group of fishers. It was an overcast morning and the breeze goose-pimpled...
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You can listen to the voice narrative or read through the text below. Enjoy! Our camp was dry and grumpy and listless. We had walked all day in the arid heat with dry and sticky mouths and throats screaming for more than the few mouthfuls of water we allowed ourselves, and we never saw a single animal or even a fresh sign. But then, the sun crept out below the clouds, and for one last time exploded the dullness into riots of colour and light. I dropped what I was doing and poured out the little wine left and...
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