TRAVEL
natural environment, where the cycle of life unfolds before your eyes – and being in a human environment, where the animals are more-or-less controlled. When you’re in the animals’ environment it as if ancestral memories locked in your genes are unleashed. The animals are most definitely not under anyone’s control, and a blast of adrenaline is likely to remind you if you momentarily forget. This is just one of the pictures locked in my mind: I am sitting alone in my car on the side of a dirt track in the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park. I’m watching a herd of around 100 delicate springbok antelopes pick for food in a dry riverbed. I can see they are alert, which is often a signal that a predator is nearby. I scan the waist high dried grass in front of me, but suddenly sense movement over my right shoulder. I look around straight into the face of a young lioness standing about five metres away. She looks briefly at me – and through me - as if I have no more significance than a bug. The irises in her golden eyes are wide and black and empty. Her gaze shifts and she glides past me, head low, her shoulders relaxed. I lose sight
38 | BUSINESS NEWS
AFRICA The Last Frontier… of her in the grass. The springboks suddenly explode into flight – more like a flock of birds than gravity-bound animals. I cannot see the lioness, but I sit there a long time. Shaking.
Richard Everist
Richard Everist started work with Lonely Planet in its early days, and spent his last five years with the company as Global Publisher. He has co-authored guidebooks to Nepal, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Malta and Britain. He was the CEO of Peregrine Adventures, before moving to Geelong. These days, he runs Around the Sun travel with his wife, Lucrezia Migliore, organising trips to the couple’s favourite corners of the world.