Dreams have a way of sneaking into reality: a chance word or sight can bring back last night’s dream even as we go about the business of the day. Wild Africa can do the same thing, nudging its way into the most ordinary events back home and lighting them up with the eerie dignity of a dreamworld.

Eddie and I were paddling the canoe along the local river in the Broads: a little storm of swallows, an egret fishing, lofty reeds and an enormous sky. And then, in the matter-of-fact way that extraordinary things happen in dreams – and Africa – an otter.

It was swimming straight towards us, intent on its own business, not seeing our canoe as any form of threat. For a long, long time, for an age of time that must have stretched for at least three seconds, we three shared the river in easy content.

And I had a flash-memory, like the breaking of a dream: I was sitting on my own in an ebony glade in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, back to a tree, quite still – and a male bushbuck passed within a few feet of me, as if we both had a perfect right to be where we were. I had a rich sense – or perhaps illusion – of belonging in the same world.

Then, like waking from a dream, it was just me and Eddie and the river again. The otter had dived, neat and soundless, just as the bushbuck had noticed me and shattered the peace of the morning with a bark that made every living thing in the glade jump, me included.

The Luangwa Valley is always just beneath the level of my consciousness and always ready to sneak into my waking thoughts. It has that effect of people who go there: a dream you must now always live with and never wish to be without. Meanwhile, it was time for me and Eddie to go to the pub.

• I’m rejoicing because next year’s trip the Valley, which I’ll be co-leading with my old friend Chris Breen of Wildlife Worldwide, is now confirmed. Still a couple of free places:

https://www.wildlifeworldwide.com/group-tours/walking-safari-in-heart-of-zambia