Botswana

Botswana hit differently from the moment I crossed into the bush. The sky here is impossibly wide — deep blue with those little puffball clouds that drift over the savanna like they have nowhere urgent to be. I'd come expecting dust and heat, and got plenty of both, but what stayed with me was the quiet. Not silence exactly, but a kind of low hum — insects, wind through acacia leaves, the distant crack of a branch somewhere in the tree line.

Chobe was the main reason for the trip, and it delivered. We were out in the game vehicle before the air had even warmed up, pushing through dense green scrub on dirt tracks that barely qualified as roads. When the guide killed the engine and pointed into the bush, I thought I was looking at a pile of rocks — then one of the lions rolled over and yawned. Three of them, completely unbothered, maybe four metres from the vehicle. My heart was going faster than I'd like to admit.

The evenings at the lodge were their own reward. Cold drink in hand, that big carved eagle above the entrance catching the last of the light, the smell of whatever was sizzling in the kitchen drifting across the open dining area. Botswana is not a cheap trip and it is not a casual one, but it earns every bit of what it costs you.