A great change comes over you when come to the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. It’s not something I can really tell; but I can at least have a try at showing. It happens when you go for a walk and meet an elephant.

Walking in the bush is a well-organised thing, because it has to be. A scout walks at the head of the file; he carries a gun and his job is to make sure that he never needs to use it, while at the same time getting close – as close as is safe for everyone involved – to the big mammals that dominate the wooded savannahs of the Valley.

And so we met an elephant under a winterthorn tree and because we were mere humans, we had no option to stop and wait on his convenience. You could call that politeness or common-sense or due deference: whichever way, we waited as you always wait while he picked up seedpods fallen from the tree in the twin fingers of his trunk before eventually drifting away – note that elephants have the tendency to move, when easy in themselves and on good terms with everything around them, as if wafted by a gentle breeze.

And that was it, really. He ate, he drifted, we watched, we waited. We waited on the convenience of an elephant and that was fine and just and utterly appropriate, because we had all the time in the world, did we not? A yellow butterfly flew between us and the elephant; a species called African migrant, so far as I could work out. I wrote in my notebook

Like the butterfly

I always give way

to elephants

 

• I was co-leading the Ultimate Luangwa safari for wildlifeworldwide.com. Next year I will be co-leading https://www.wildlifeworldwide.com/group-tours/sacred-combe-safari and I will also be participating in https://www.wildlifeworldwide.com/group-tours/festival-of-wildlife-zambia