From the lush growth, a family of forest elephants appear and shower in clay under a tree brimming with hornbills. Using their trunks, they fling colour over themselves as if in the throng of India's Holi festival instead of here, deep in the world's second-largest rainforest. They become a rainbow of elephants — petal-pink, yellow and gold — and once they join the others among a ribbon of muddy pools, they stand out like shining statues.
This is Dzanga Bai, renowned for its high concentration of elephants. Bais are swampy, natural forest clearings found throughout the Congo Basin. Some, like this one, are nutrient-rich hotspots with minerals in the soil, otherwise rare in a tropical jungle. They are the Center Parcs for forest elephants, where they come to drink, play and compete. Whereas in East Africa their savannah cousins often keep moving, in search of water and food, here in the bais the pachyderms linger in large numbers.
I'm here with my husband and two children, spending ten days at Sangha Lodge in the Central African Republic. It is one of Africa's most remote safari camps.
The bai is reached after a one-hour drive through the rainforest, and then a 30-minute walk past mighty buttress roots, the foundation of the forest; at one point we have to wade up a stream. A soprano of birds and insects fills the air. Then, suddenly, the tone changes to a low, sonorous growl, coming
