With my fear of heights conquered, it was now time to tackle my other phobia. The aim of every safari is to see the Big Five – elephants, lions, buffalo, leopards and rhinos. Back at the luxurious Singita lodge, my affable guide guaranteed me my “five a day”. “Great! But I presume I’ll be in an armoured vehicle of some kind?” I replied, trailing him up a bush track. “Possibly a tank?”
He ushered me towards a side-less, window-less safari jeep; there wasn’t even a windscreen, you know, just to allow maximum access to predators. We’d be “meals on wheels”. I glanced at his rifle. “I hope that’s a tranquilliser dart?” I asked, jelly-legged. “Not for the animals, but for me, obviously.”
Clutching the jeep seat in a state of gritted-teeth terror, I thought about how much I prefer animals in the past tense – as in, on a plate, soaked in gravy. But as we crested the hill once more, my fear evaporated at the wonder of nature playing out on the plains below. Some 1.7 million wildebeest were making their annual 2,000-mile migration from Kenya. The long line of stampeding beasts stretched from one horizon to the other, in a permanent peak hour.
With their big, shaggy, white beards, and “windswept and interesting” look, they reminded me of a herd of Billy Connollys, galloping gaily by. The sheer mass of the migration is overwhelming. For predators, it’s just one giant conveyor belt of moreish morsels. For hours I sat, transfixed, filming the pilgrimage – not so much footage, as hoofage.
For the rest of the day, we darted on and off road, gawping at the most exotic menagerie – 300,000 gazelle and 200,000 zebras travel alongside the wildebeest, which meant we were constantly hitting the brakes to allow huge herds to cross the road. It gave a whole new meaning to the term “zebra crossing”. We were glowered at by buffalo (these big boys have serious anger management issues) and laughed at by baboons who tumbled through the pampas. We giggled at the warthogs scurrying comedically past nature’s hoover – otherwise known as an aardvark. Then at dusk, we watched grimly as a slinky jackal tracked a lost gazelle; scavenging hyenas salivating in the shadows.
