October 2019 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | 305PHOTOGRAPHS: ARIS VRAKAS, ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES, ALEX PRESTON
frica always existed to me as a sunlit elsewhere,
a counterpoint to the sometimes desolate exis-
tence of my childhood in a fading English
seaside town. My father had spent his twenties
and thirties in Africa, just as the continent was throwing off the
shackles of colonialism, and the pleasures he
enjoyed were still those of the colonist: the grass
tennis courts of the Muthaiga Country Club in
Nairobi; the wood-panelled bar at Wilson
Airport; the grand houses and liveried staff of the
estate-owning English upper-classes.
I travelled to Kenya as a teenager and remem-
ber the power of discovering the place for myself.
I’d always been mad about animals and birds, and
during three weeks of roaming about, binocular-
marks circling my eyes, I felt lost in a kind of
happy dream-world. We slept in tents and shacks,
or under the stars; I was charged by a hippo on
the shores of Lake Naivasha; and pelted with fruit
by monkeys in the crater of Mount Suswa. It was
a blissful time, barrelling wildly about a landscape that felt like it
carried a special paternal blessing.
Now, at 11 and nine, my children were the perfect age for a safari.
I wanted to fashion a trip that captured the magic of the place
without pandering to colonial nostalgia; that reflected both my
father’s Africa and my own recollections of exploring a landscape of
amazing diversity, dense with extraordinary wildlife. More than
anything, I wanted to avoid the horror stories I’d heard of Disneyfied
safari experiences, with tourists in 4WDs queuing to see half-tame
animals before hurtling off to tick the next box on their list. I wanted
that rarest and most valuable thing: authenticity.
Here, a fortuitous piece of the past reared its head. A friend
recommended I search out Yellow Zebra Safaris – ‘The best safari
company in the business.’ It is run by Julian Carter-Manning, with
whom I’d been at school, and who has gathered together a selection
of the top safari guides and camp managers in Africa. ‘What you
need,’ he said, ‘is Tanzania in April.’ I left him with a list of demands- we wanted the wildebeest migration, big cats, luxury but not to
feel over-cossetted, unforgettable views and secret valleys, forgotten
tribespeople and red-in-tooth-and-claw immersion in the natural
world. Oh, and my son wanted to see painted wolves. ‘We can do all
of that,’ he told me, ‘and a lot more.’
We travelled to Tanzania in mid-April, theoretically the rainy
season, and at the very tail end of the wildebeest
migration. ‘Everyone believes the herds move off
early,’ Julian told us, ‘but they always stay south
for longer than people think. You may get some
rain, but really very little, it’s actually a plus.’ It’s
wildflower season in April, so that everywhere we
went, the grasslands were bright with purple and
white hibiscus. Where earlier in the year every-
thing is dry and dusty, we came to a place of rich
and verdant lushness. People are yet to catch up
with all this, though, so the reserves were empty when we were
there, as if we had the whole of the Serengeti to ourselves.
We flew into Kilimanjaro Airport late. I always prefer to arrive in
a new land in darkness, the world around a secret that only morning
will reveal. Our hotel, the Arusha Coffee Lodge, was a collection of
well-appointed cabins surrounded by night-scented flowers. We
were up early for our flight out of Arusha’s small airstrip, just a few
minutes down the road. Coastal Aviation runs a series of handsome
Cessnas that seat a dozen or so people and jump from one landing-
strip to the next across the country. We spent the whole flight with
our noses pressed against the windows, looking out as the houses
and farmsteads began to thin, then disappeared altogether, and
there was just the occasional Maasai boma, the vast stretch of the
savannah, the saline shimmer of the lakes, and, always brooding in
the distance, the massif of the Ngorongoro volcano range.
We were met at Mwiba’s airstrip in a burly, canvas-roofed 4WD,
by our guide for the next few days, Saitoti Ole Kuwai. Julian had told
me that Saitoti and Alex Walker (of whom more soon) were the
best two game guides in Tanzania, possibly in the whole of Africa.
He wasn’t wrong. We were driven through woods and scrub to the
stunning Mwiba Lodge, perched on a rocky outcrop in its own
125,000-acre private reserve. Drinks and cool towels awaited us in
the glorious central dining area, whose decking looked down over
a gorge through which a river tumbled. There were rock hyraxes
sunning themselves on the stones by the river, kudu swinging their
heads at a drinking hole, vervet monkeys yammering through the
trees. There are other, more savage animals about the place, too,
and we had to be escorted by a spear-carrying askari guard along
the wooden walkways to our tent.
‘Tent’ isn’t really doing the thing justice, though. There was
canvas involved, certainly, but the room itself was absurdly luxu-
rious, with soft clouds of bedding and a bath looking out over the
river. A verandah linked our tent to the one next door, which my
children swiftly, joyfully, occupied. Khakis on, excitement at fever-
pitch, we set out that evening for a game drive. Another top tip from
Julian – get yourself the best binoculars you can afford. I borrowed
a pair of Leica’s Trinovid HD range before I left England and they
gave the whole experience greater depth, more clarity, brought theA
Below and top: the
Serengeti National
Park. Above:
Alex Walker’s
Kusini Camp