Strange sights, new sounds, unfamiliar smells. It is a total assault on the senses, like being a child again and seeing the world afresh. Once you have been there, breathed its dry air, watched distant storms trailing across its immense horizons and been awakened by a million purring doves, you will never be the same. At least, despite everything I had read, that is how it was for me.
My initiation took place in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve. I had flown by light aircraft from Nairobi at the end of the rains and the land was still as green as Ireland as we bounced from one thermal to the next over endless plains on which herds of buffaloes stampeded away beneath our wings.
Even before we touched down on
