2022
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Cut and Run
After all the animals I’ve seen in the wild here in Africa, it felt distinctly strange to be going to a zoo… but I wanted to see what a Ugandan zoo was like
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Impenetrable
It sounds so much like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? First there’s a long climb, high into the steep and scary mountains. Then you hack your way with swords into a place called the Impenetrable Forest. And it’s all in order to meet a kind of gentle giants who live nowhere else in the world……
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For a Woman
The attempt to find tree-climbing lions yesterday was, alas, a complete bust. First of all, the heavens opened up and it poured. The lions — along with nearly all of the other wildlife, apart from one new species of antelope called a topi and a lone, sodden bull elephant — took shelter from the torrential…
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Trip Diary: Breaking the First Rule
This post is going to be hard to write. I have to admit it. I broke the first rule, and it bit me, badly. What first rule, you wonder? Well, they do depend on who you ask. My mother’s first rule was always, “Never hit anything that’s harder than you are,” and a good and…
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On the Nile
We hit the road at six thirty on our first full day at Murchison Falls. From the beginning of this trip, I’ve accepted that getting up early is the price of being there when the wildlife comes out and does spectacular things. Innocent pointed out on our way back to the Lodge in the late…
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The Rhinos, the Road, and the River
We set out this morning at 7:30, leaving Entebbe for Murchison Falls. It’s a six or seven hour trip, but we split it up with a stop at midday. We also talked most of the way. It’s generally considered inadvisable to discuss politics or religion with somebody you barely know, but Innocent and I covered…
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Postcard from Uganda
In this special post I’ve put together some of the coolest photos from my two weeks in southern Africa, that somehow never made it into the write-ups.
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Transitions
It’s hard to believe that Nadine, the fantastic agent from Safari Specialists who has been helping me put together the nucleus of this trip for the last two and a half years, isn’t involved anymore. Her job is finished — I’ve gone all the places she arranged for me to go; I have had a…
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Bushman’s Holiday
This morning at seven, I was called to the gate to find two men and three horses waiting for me. Two of the horses were Appaloosas; one was a very pretty bay whom I was later told was a celebrity horse: he had been featured in a Taylor Swift video. I felt that the two…
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Soft Camp, Hard Landscape
After the excitement of leopards and hyenas and dead lions, I said goodbye to my friends at Splash Camp and caught a bush plane for the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans, in the middle of the Kalahari desert. I was supposed to be headed for a modest place called Camp Kalahari — about the luxury level of…