At Namiri Plains in the eastern Serengeti, the sense of space is intoxicating. A sea of grass and cloud shadows, rising and falling all the way to a horizon so wide and far away you can almost sense the curve of the earth as it rolls through the sky to meet the rising sun. Together with the animals that live here, it is why you come to Africa. A magic beyond price, that steals up on you and takes you unawares. A kind of madness, like the beginning of a love affair, that makes you wish you could drive for ever among the lonely inselbergs and never want the days to end.
In our increasingly busy world such emptiness is hard to find, but Africa has room to spare. Botswana’s Makgadikgadi is such a place — a desert of glittering soda pans the size of Switzerland, in the heart of the Kalahari. I went there once with Ralph Bousfield, the owner of Jack’s Camp, who took me to see Chapman’s Baobab, a giant tree whose seven spires dominated this ancient landscape since the Stone Age until it fell in 2016.
As we leant against its massive trunk, I still remember his words as we watched the sun go down. “One day, not far off,” he said, looking out into the boundless desert beyond, “space will be the world’s greatest luxury. That is why we are so lucky to live here, where there is still room to be yourself, to sit under a tree and count the stars.”
Leggete l'articolo completo e molti altri in questo numero di
Travel Africa
Opzioni di acquisto di seguito
Se il problema è vostro,
Accesso per leggere subito l'articolo completo.
Singolo numero digitale
Sept-Nov 2020
Questo numero e altri numeri arretrati non sono inclusi in un nuovo
abbonamento. Gli abbonamenti comprendono l'ultimo numero regolare e i nuovi numeri pubblicati durante l'abbonamento. Travel Africa
Abbonamento digitale annuale
€17,99
fatturati annualmente