Simon Barnes - Rogue Lion Safaris

We drove on. ‘How odd, to start singing hymns in the middle of the bush.’

‘Not so odd. I sing hymns everywhere. My father is a vicar.’

‘Oh,’ I said, rather inadequately. ‘What does he think about you being in the bush?’

‘He thinks I’ll grow out of it.’

‘My mother thought that,’ George called from the front. ‘A lot more vultures.’

He was right. The umbrella thorn above the kill was now thick with them, motionless, like weird and probably poisonous fruit, as they surveyed the banquet from which they were still excluded.

‘All right,’ George said. ‘Ready for a spot of bundu-bashing, Caroline?’ Without reducing speed, he drove off the track and onto the bush-studded plain. This had a drastic effect on the motion of the Land Cruiser: on the road, it rolled like a Channel ferry in mildly inclement weather; the plain imparted a violent pitching and yawing motion that mimicked a sea passage in a typhoon. Caroline, propelled from her seat, made a desperate lunge for the grab-bar. I was already standing high, one foot on the spare wheel and the other on the vehicle’s side, holding onto the grab-bar with one hand. Though it looked fairly cool, this position was not, in fact, for Caroline’s benefit: good bush-driving in these circumstances is a team job. With the height, I could give George useful information.

The way between us and the lion was blocked by the dry watercourse. ‘Left. No, on a bit. Past the bushes. There, you can get down and up here.’ George inched the vehicle down, and then took the rise on the other side with a sudden rush. At the lip, the vehicle twisted giddily, one wheel lost contact with the ground, but after a moment it toppled and fell back with a gratifying thump, and we were across. The way ahead was across a wide area of black cotton soil. This is perfectly horrible stuff. The ground, flooded, dried out and baked, cracks into cobbles. It feels like crossing a sea of cricket balls. You can make walking pace at the easy parts.

‘Is it legal to drive so far off the road?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Leon says you need a fast escape route when you drive near lion.’

We drove on. ‘The kill’s where it was this morning,’ I called from my crow’s nest. ‘Two, maybe three lion on it. I can see six lying around still under the thorn tree.’

‘Two more under the bush on the right,’ Joseph said.

‘I was just coming to them,’ I said with dignity. I hadn’t seen them at all.

‘Bullshit,’ Joseph said. ‘And a single female there, that makes twelve.’

‘I still can’t see them,’ Caroline said anxiously.

‘Take the nearer of the two thorn trees. Follow the trunk down to the ground. Then left, just a little.’

‘ Oh .’

We drove juddering on, pitching and yawing across the merciless ground. George cut away from the line we had walked that morning, coming back to the lion from a more open area. The bushes fell away: we had an uninterrupted view: sandy shapes in sand-coloured grass, a hundred yards away.

George halted for a moment, looking around, and said encouragingly: ‘Perfect. Perfect.’ And then, without any more ado, he drove straight into the middle of them.

He drove furiously on at the not quite walking pace that the conditions demanded, and once comfortably and utterly surrounded by lion, he stopped. And, to an audible gasp from Caroline, switched off the engine.

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