The upper deck at Chokoko Bush Camp looks out across a plain towards an artificial waterhole. Here between lunch and afternoon tea (with Compulsory Cake) I used to sit in a comfy chair with my book and my binoculars. From there I watched the bush go by, and kept a bird list while I was doing so.

In truth this is bad practice. It was bad birdwatching, a subject on which I am an expert, and I was also reading with rather less concentration than my book deserved, for it was Hamlet. No matter. I found quiet delight in both activities, the one making the other still richer.

This is one of the deeper pleasures of the Luangwa Valley in Zambia: idling away with the vastness of Africa all around you. I made notes about yellow-breasted greenbul and orange-breasted bush shrike, turned back to the book to be wooed by the grace of language once again until distant voices roused me and I noted that an African hoopoe had called and so had a brown-hooded kingfisher.

I looked out towards the waterhole and then, with the matter-of-fact nonchalance of creatures from a fairy-tale, a party of roan antelope advanced. Special antelopes these: not ones you see every day or every trip: sandy-browny-red with a black mask like the Lone Ranger, males and females both with a fine curving pair of horns.

Three of them got to their knees to enjoy their drink. The others paused, hesitated. Wouldn’t do to get taken by surprise. Was it really safe to lower your head and your eyes and drink life from the muddy pool? Yes. It must be. Go for it.

They are big – the fourth biggest of all antelopes – and horse-like: their scientific name Hippotragus equinus translates as Horse-goat horse. They have distinctly horsey gaits but were in no hurry to show off their paces: a stately walk was fine, while scanning the open plain for lions.

I counted 14 of them, three of them very young. Eventually they all drank their fill, raised their handsome heads, looked out again through their black masks as if to say with the Lone Ranger: “My work here is done.” And at once they were off together in a nice collected canter: no itchin’ hurry but no sense in pushing your luck. I lowered my eyes to the book and tried to remember what was happening in Elsinore. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.

 

• I was co-leading a trip with wildlifeworldwide.com

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