I’m serious. I’m putting together a trip to the Luangwa Valley in October 2016, and another in 2017, and I’d be delighted if you could join me.
My new book The Sacred Combe comes out in January. It’s all about the secret special places that mean so much to us: the book’s subtitle is The Search for Humanity’s Heartland.
The Luangwa Valley has always seen my special place, and so inevitably the new book returns again and again the Valley. It begins on my first night in the Valley when I awoke to find elephants eating my hut, and it ends on my most recent trip, with elephants celebrating the arrival of the rains.
And it occurred to me that the best way to celebrate this book would be to set up the Sacred Combe Safari. So I called my old friend Chris Breen, with whom I have shared a thousand adventures. Chris is the founder and head honcho of the specialist travel company Wildlife Worldwide, and he agreed that this would be a fine trip and he would put it together. He liked the idea so much that he’s coming too.
We plan to walk, drive, sit and see wonders. We’ll see the valley at dawn; we’ll explore its secrets in the darkness. We’ll look for lions and leopards, we’ll raise our glasses to elephants, we’ll hear the honking of hippos from our beds and we’ll see the most fabulous birds on earth. I’ll even try and get you identify some of them on call.
We’ll be with some of the finest guides in Africa in the finest national park in Africa. Please come. We’ll have a blast.
Click this link to find out more.
http://www.wildlifeworldwide.com/group-tours/sacred-combe-safari
There’s not much more I’d like than that, Simon. Better start saving!
Be wonderful if you could make it.
Looks fantastic – unfortunately can’t make it next summer, but if you can get 2017 dates out early then I’d definately be very keen.
That would be brilliant, i’ll send you email to Wildlife Worldwide and we can take it from there. Fingers crossed…
Would love to come with you. I think, though, that that time of year is particularly hot, especially for walking in the bush. I went to the South Luangwa a few years ago, hoping to see more leopard than usual. Of course the leopard were playing games with us. Leaving paw prints outside our tent for us to see in the morning – probably sat outside all night. One evening the cook came running out to meet us on our return from a game drive. “Did you see it? DId you see it? That big male leopard? It was right by the camp as you left and roaring?” Of course not. More leopard have spotted me than the other way round. My other abiding memory is the tsetse fly there. A small price to pay though. We also had the privilege to meet “Baron Bob” a couple of times. We went to an island on the Zambezi, thinking that although there was little or no game there it was just a beautiful, peaceful spot for a sundowner anyway. He took a recording of a male lion with us and played it on a loudspeaker. Very soon, the largest and angriest male lion I have ever seen was on the opposite bank displaying his annoyance at another male on his patch. My special place is Matusadona in Zim. Haven’t been able to go there for years but many happy memories…
Sounds like a great trip. You do your walking all before 8 o’clock in the morning, so it’s perfectly comfortable. It would be lovely if you could join us this year or next year and have another dart for the illusive and wonderful leopard.