Safaris – don’t have to be that way!

These days safaris can be so disappointing: they used to be the preserve of the well-informed traveller but nowadays you see safaris advertised in all sorts of brochures. The idea of sitting on my bum, in a zebra-striped van with half-a-dozen others appals me.

But it doesn’t have to be this way!

Some years ago I camped on an oxbow of the river Garamba. We had made the trek after reading Mark Carwardine’s book “Last Chance To See”. I wanted to see one of the world’s last 28 Northern White Rhino. Getting to Garamba is a bit of a mission: it sits on the Sudan border, just inside Zaire (as it was in those days) and when we signed in, the foolscap ledger went back to the 1940’s. They hadn’t filled one visitor’s book in more than half a century! Believe me, it really is quite a mission to get there.

Safari in Garamba was an amazing experience for a variety of reasons, but the pinnacle was probably being woken by hippo breath. Camping on an oxbow is always dumb, particularly in remote country, but on this particular night we all went to bed in the usual way and by the time the hippos came out to eat, we were all fast asleep in two-man tents. I was awoken in the wee small hours by a hippo exhaling on my sleeping forehead. He took off. I went back to sleep with a grin on my face. Fortunate outcome. Read more »