I had been back from Zambia only a few days when I put up a Chinese water deer. I was on horseback at the time, riding through one of those low, almost subterranean Broadlands fields when the deer broke cover. They like to do this pretty late in the day. It always makes you jump,… [Read More]

November 2 We took a walk on our last morning in the Luangwa Valley and it was a good one. Well, it’s always good, isn’t it? We had almost completed our circuit and were heading back to camp when it all started to kick off. There was a lone buffalo between us and camp. Demanding… [Read More]

November 1 It was our last full day in the Valley so we took an all-day drive from Tena-Tena to the Salt Pan. Here, the country opens out, the trees fall away and the spring-water creates a little inland delta: an island of wet entirely surrounded by land. It was an abrupt change of mood… [Read More]

October 31 Every now and then the Luangwa Valley will give you a break from wonders. Not often, mind, but occasionally the place allows you a quiet hour or so when you can draw breath and remind yourself that amazing things are not, after all, a basic human right. Not that it was the dreariest… [Read More]

October 29 You can’t always do what you want. You can make a plan and a damn good plan too,  but then you have to change it. And then change it again. When you’re walking in the bush, a certain degree of flexibility is a good thing, for all sorts of reasons. Staying alive is… [Read More]

October 28 The artificial water-hole by Crocodile River Camp is a kind of stage for the theatrical performances of the bush. Watch it all day: the thinking man’s television. A rosette of a dozen impalas dared to drink all at once: bottoms up! Lillian’s lovebirds and red-billed buffalo soldiers dropped by in numbers throughout the… [Read More]

October 27 The Luangwa River does bends. A 180 is nothing. Just routine. A 270 is more the river’s style, as here: vast beaches of sand either side of the life-giving dry-season trickle. Dry lagoons either side of the river show where the river has performed a 360, joined up with itself and created a… [Read More]

Oct 26 The temperature dropped like a brick that night. The morning was cool – well, cool by the standards of the Valley in late October. Not quite the open-oven-door we had yesterday, anyway. And as we drove across the still-dry lagoons, it was clear that the shift in the weather had prompted a certain… [Read More]

I’m rather proud of one word, scribbled in pencil in my field notebook (which is not to be confused with the fair-copy-notebook written up a few hours later). The word in question is “restless”. I wrote it about lions. They were resting up under a collection of bushes spread out across the landscape in mid-morning…. [Read More]

October 24 But the fact of the matter is that you can’t spot a genet. That’s because they’ve already been spotted. In the Luangwa Valley the large-spotted genet is the prevailing species, though their scientific name is much more charming: Genetta tigrina. Take a night-drive in the Valley. It’s a rare night when you don’t… [Read More]

October 23 The day began with a crossing of the Luangwa River: a canoe journey of a few seconds. Then a short walk to Chikoko bush camp; nice zebras. Great familiarity does not impossibilise surprise: it makes surprises rarer and therefore deeper. Looking out at the flat area of dry lagoon beyond camp I was… [Read More]

First, many apologies for my long silence in this space. But look out – I’m just back from Zambia full of resolutions to do better. First I’ll send a retrospective daily blog from that glorious trip before attempting more regular reports from our bit of marsh and elsewhere. So… October 22 The aeroplane leapt into… [Read More]