Chris and I collected our guests from Mfuwe Airport and set off with them to Kuyenda Camp in South Luangwa National Park. As usual we felt a touch of anxiety: will they be nice? Will they get on with each other? And us? And crucially, will we be able to show them the wonders they were seeking?

 

But we have deep faith in the Valley, and the long drive south took us past elephants and eagles. And then, after a quick pause to get baggage into huts, we were off again.

 

There is always a sense of relief in the first lions. And there they were, two females with two male cubs, both very jaunty and suckling hard. The mother was a scar-faced veteran who didn’t look as if she had been tender to any living thing in the course of entire life, and yet there she was, head-rubbing and licking the cubs with all the mother-love in the world. With her was a much younger lioness, unmarked, very pale, and as beautiful as a lioness can get.

 

This is all that’s left of the once-mighty Chichele Pride: a disintegration that takes place, often simply because of the volatile nature of leonine politics. More on that later: but right now it was time to rejoice in lions, rejoice in living in a land full of lions, at least for a few days, and to hear their distant roars every night as you lie in bed.

 

In some ways the first sight of lions is, for our guests, getting it out of the way. It’s a sight that can be ticked off, and what’s more, it’s an important visceral realisation that this is a fierce place full of fierce beasts. But once that’s achieved you can start discovering things that lie still deeper. These things are rather harder to put into words, but everyone who has truly got this place knows what I’m talking about. The first lion of the trip is the portal to such knowledge.

 

The mother wore a big healed scar across her chest from some past tangle with a buffalo; Luangwa lions have a taste for the most difficult prey. She lay still and calm while one of the cubs leapt onto her back and for moment stood perilously balanced.

 

• 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