TANZANIA
few things jolt you more abruptly from a midday siesta than the rumble of an elephant's stomach – particularly if you open your eyes to find the culprit barely a trunk's reach away.
Before dozing off in the deck chair outside my tent, I remember watching a lone male impala browsing along the lakeshore. There had also been two buffalo in the lake itself, egrets squatting on their backs like snagged laundry. The tents at Lake Manze Camp in Nyerere National Park – first stop on my 10-day fly-in safari of Southern Tanzania – were spread out along a path, and mine was at the far end, a dozen or so paces from the water's edge.
The elephants had appeared almost silently. Not a single crack-of-twig between them. It was almost as if their feet hadn't touched the ground. Were it not for the deep resonating groans and gurgles emanating from their stomachs they might have slipped past unseen.
The encounter offered
