Wild life

Africa Orientale Italiana ‘Where did you get those glasses?’ a stylish Italian gentleman asked me, gesturing at the acetate L.G.R. frames I wear for my myopia. I said Nairobi. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘I make them.’ Luca Gnecchi Ruscone and I then had a conversation that brought back fond memories of adventures across the Horn of

Kenya’s Rift Valley The story of Kenya’s Europeans such as the 5th Baron Delamere, who died recently, is one of hard work. In late 1897 his grandfather, the 3rd Baron, rode his horse up the Rift Valley’s eastern escarpment into the highlands. For a year he had been trekking through Somalia’s burning deserts and now

Iona, Angola East of the gulps of cormorants along the Skeleton Coast by the Ilha da Baia dos Tigres, Atlantic mists are rolling in across the Angolan desert. A red, alien sun dips towards the horizon and I’m crouching down on the sand, with my face close to the oldest living thing on our planet.

Lake Malawi As we speed southwards along the potholed road near Lake Malawi’s shores, I tell my colleague Helen that overpopulation in Africa is just a myth. On either side of the road is an unbroken procession of women carrying firewood on their heads, of barefoot children, of poor men on bicycles, avenues of huts,

Republic of Congo I’m sending this to you from the rainforest in Congo, surrounded by vast trees and jungle noises in one of the loveliest, remotest places I’ve ever seen. Yesterday, flying at 150 feet above the canopy, I glimpsed in a clearing a family of relaxed gorillas gazing up at me, a visitor from

Nairobi, Kenya Parliament and City Hall were burning under great columns of smoke and clouds of tear gas hung over Nairobi’s crowded streets fizzing with violence, flying rocks and gunshots. Speeding along the expressway looking down on these running battles, I thought, as I always do, it’s so good to be home in Kenya. Judging

Laikipia, Kenya This month, in broad daylight on our Kenyan farm, a lioness mauled one of my bull calves. Before she could make a kill, a quick-witted herder intervened and drove the beast off. My son Rider loaded the injured calf into the pickup and brought it home, where he gently cleaned the tooth and

Laikipia, Kenya By the time I set off from the farm before dawn we’d had 22in of rain in the past month. At the bottom of the valley I saw in the headlights that our lugga, or seasonal watercourse, had become a roaring torrent of brown water after yet another downpour overnight. If I tried

Laikipia, Kenya When I met him as a boy, Terence Adamson was an elderly fellow whose face had been half torn away by one of his brother George’s famous lions. His disfigured features made him hard to look at, but Terence taught me how to dowse for water. He’d pick up any old stick and

Laikipia Viazi is a Samburu mongrel bitch with a curly tail. She is one of the most delightful, wonderful creatures I’ve known in my life. Her energy is boundless, she is always cheery and she’s been my great friend. When our collie Sasi had her litter of puppies in a heavy thunderstorm on the farm

Malindi, Kenya coast As I walked along the empty shore on our stretch of Kenya’s north coast, I noticed a big fish, a giant trevally, swimming in the gentle waves parallel to me. When I came to the coral rag cliffs at the end of the beach and turned around, the fish also turned around

Kenya Hannes became a professional hunter because, as he says in his fine book Strange Tales from the African Bush, he missed ‘the smell of cordite… the clatter of the helicopters and the memory of the blood brotherhood that few, other than soldiers under fire, are lucky enough to know’. He’s a 14th generation white

Laikipia, Kenya Twenty years ago, we pitched a tent in the wilderness which became the farm where we live now. We were starting from scratch. At twilight we saw a low, silver mist descend into the trees, making halos around the distant giraffe and elephant, and settling into the grass. The constellations came out, the

On Remembrance Sunday in Nairobi nearly a decade ago, an ancient Kenyan veteran told Sam Mattock, a British ex-cavalry officer, that he had lost his second world war service medals. Could Sam help replace them? In a culmination of Sam’s personal efforts, King Charles III, on his visit to Kenya with Queen Camilla next week,

The Mongolian taiga After driving across clean, fast rivers and through forests turning golden, orange and red in the Mongolian autumn, we came upon herds of yaks grazing the taiga. The yak, or Tartary ox, is the Shetland pony of cattle, as drawn by Norman Thelwell: not much higher than a big ram at the

Kenya Hassan was our skipper. He’d take us in his dhow out on the Indian Ocean for trips along the Kenya coast, south among the secret wave breaks or north towards Formosa Bay. Once he took my brother on a proper voyage to Lamu island, which needed several days even in calm weather. With his

Laikipia Some are saved by Jesus and they are sober. For others, drunkenness is as natural as love-making, roasted meat and weekend football. In northern Kenya we brew a honey mead called muratina; then there’s a millet beer and strongest of all is a moonshine, changa’a, which you can smell from several huts away and

The Farm, Laikipia Outside the nightjars were calling and a zebra brayed in the valley. The constellations were still bright as the dogs all piled into the Landcruiser with me for the drive out to the yards. During two years of drought we’ve been unable to sell cattle, which have cost us a fortune in

Laikipia The principal of the local polytechnic was waiting for me in the kitchen. Frequently in the kitchen there is a chief or a surveyor, or geese, or the cats Omar and Bernini, the dogs Jock, Sasi and Potatoes, foundling lambs or calves gambolling about hoping for milk, or stockmen with news of a sick