AFRICA’S LAST GREAT MIGRATION

Let’s be clear. This is not a bland travel tale. The kind where you skim over a script stuffed with adjectives, flick through photos, linger as long as your attention-deficit-disorder will allow, and move swiftly on to the next picture fantasy. No, this is next-level stuff. Stay with me…

This story starts before the break of dawn, with the swelling sound of millions of jubilant high-pitched squeaky voices celebrating a night of feasting.

Walking in the dark along a hippo path at the edge of the wet Mushitu forests of Kasanka National Park in central Zambia, the cacophony of sound produced by nine million bats in conversation precedes one of the most awe-inspiring natural spectacles in the world – the flight of the fruit bats at dawn.

As the sun rises, the bats spiral in a massive cloud of wings and beating hearts over the indigenous forest of Kasanka. It is a sight that blots out the sky and will sear itself into your soul forever. It happens in November each year, and it is part of the largest mammal migration on the planet.

Witnessing the beginning of the annual flight of millions of African straw-coloured fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) from the Congo basin to Kasanka had been on my bucket list for a very long time. I have travelled and worked in Africa as a journalist for more than 30 years, but there are always those who are older and wiser, and better-travelled. So, when my friend Helen van Houten said that the