Why Africa?

Africa changes you forever, like nowhere else on earth. Once you have been there you will never be the same. But how do you begin to describe its magic to someone who has never felt it? How can you explain the fascination of this vast, dusty continent, whose oldest roads are elephant paths? Could it be because Africa is the place of all our beginnings, the cradle of humankind, where our species first stood upright on the savannahs of long ago? Maybe that was what led Karen Blixen to say, in Out of Africa, "Here I am, where I belong".

Africa is so huge. Here, far from the 21st century, you come face to face with uncluttered space and distance on a scale no longer found in Europe. Many of its national parks and game reserves -- Kruger, Kafue, Serengeti, Selous -- are the size of small countries, and you could fit the whole of Yorkshire into the outermost contour of Mt Kilimanjaro and still have room to spare.
I knew I would love Africa because it was the fulfilment of a childhood dream. Yet even then, having read Blixen and Hemingway and the rest, I was still not prepared for its impact, which has left me reeling to this day.

For a start, no-one told me Africa could be so green. I thought it would be all heat and dust and flat-topped thorn trees, as indeed it can be in Samburu and Tsavo and the Kalahari thirstlands. But when the thunderclouds pile up in the late afternoons, and you smell the earth after rain, when the dust is laid and the Masai plains are as green as Ireland, you'll lose your heart forever.

What I most wanted to see were Africa's storybook animals: zebra and giraffe, elephant and rhino, the pin-striped kudu with his spiral horns and the menacing, black-as-midnight buffalo. And like every newcomer I was desperate to see a lion.
Nobody forgets their first lion. Mine was in the Mara, a solitary male sitting on an anthill with the wind blowing through his mane. It was a cold, bright morning and although he was a long way off I could see his breath condensing like steam every time he roared.
How often have I woken to the rumble of lions greeting the sun. It is at once the most awesome and the most evocative sound in Africa, and to live in lion country is to breathe the air of a vanishing freedom. To rise at dawn when the bush comes alive to the endless chanting of a million doves and set out into a world whose horizons are as boundless as the ocean -- this is an experience that has no equal.

If you are enthralled by the natural world, you will never be bored. From end to end, wild Africa heaves, buzzes and pulsates with life. Its nights, lit by the brightest stars you'll ever see, echo to the whoop of hyaenas, the chirrup of Scops owls and the chiming of frogs, like ice cubes shaken in a glass; and from first light to sundown there is always something amazing to look at. Not just the Big Five but a cavalcade of antelopes and smaller mammals; porcupines, honey badgers, wild dogs, serval cats. All these and more, together with chameleons and fishing owls, forest butterflies, flamingos by the million, and baobab trees older than Stonehenge.

And what lavish backdrops Africa provides for your encounters with the wild. In Zambia, the home of walking safaris, it might be the oxbow lagoons of the Luangwa Valley or the winterthorn glades of the lower Zambezi. Botswana offers the Okavango Delta, that miraculous oasis in the northern Kalahari where the fish eagle's cry echoes across 26,000km of islands, floodplains and crystal channels.
In Tanzania the Ngorongoro Crater will take your breath away. Imagine waking on the crater rim and gazing down into that lost world of flamingo lakes and giant tuskers 600m below. Or driving out from Ndutu in the Serengeti when the plains are black with wildebeest, towards a horizon that feels like the end of the earth.
But when it comes to utter remoteness and desert landscapes on an epic scale, nowhere can touch Namibia. If you don't believe me, fly north over the burnt-out emptiness of Kaokoland and camp for a few days at Serra Cafema, on the Kunene River.
I love the stripped-down safari life, the comforts of soft beds, cold drinks, hot showers and same-day laundry, the taste of bread baked daily in a bed of hot ashes, the noontide siestas when the wood doves are calling, the afternoon game drives that stretch into the golden hour before sundown, when shadows lengthen and cheetahs emerge to hunt for gazelles, and the last moments before bedtime, watching the campfire sparks flying up into the vast African night.

Where will you stay? In a Zambian bushcamp with hot bucket showers? Or a glitzy lodge with your own private plunge pool in South Africa's Sabi Sands reserve? Wherever you choose, the food and service are seldom less than excellent, and the location sensational. Often you can watch game from your camp verandah. At Savute Elephant Camp in Botswana, I once watched a mother leopard and her cub stroll past just a few metres from where I was sitting.
One of the best ways to round off a safari is to relax beside the Indian Ocean. Rent a house overlooking the dhow harbour on Lamu. Loll in a hammock on Mafia Island or go swimming with whale sharks at Mnemba, a dreamy private atoll off the tip of Zanzibar. From Kiwayu in northern Kenya all the way down to the Bazaruto Archipelago in Mozambique, you'll find barefoot luxury beach lodges where all you need is a kikoi and a sunhat -- plus an appetite for fantastic seafood.

On the coast or in the bush, one thing remains constant, and that is the innate friendliness of the African people. The camp staff who bring your early morning tea; the cooks and drivers; the bush-savvy guides and the poler who steers your mokoro; all are so welcoming, so eager to please; and like the women you may see hoeing in their vegetable shambas, and the Maasai herdsmen with their red blankets and shining spears, they possess a natural dignity and respect for the elderly that is sadly lacking in our own society.

And if you are like me, when your safari is over and you are safely back home, not a day will pass when you don't think of Africa. Looking out of my window at the green hills of England, I wonder if it is raining in the Serengeti, and if the lions are roaring across Musiara Marsh.