Over a decade ago, we had our very first encounter with Africa’s Big Five – we paid a return visit to see if the magic still remained As far as backdrops for a meditation session go, this one is particularly scenic: dawn has just begun to unravel over a vast grassy plain and in the distance, a mountain range reveals its silhouette under the opalescent glow of the rising sun. Leaves ripple in the breeze as I breathe in the pristine air, lulling myself towards transcendence. The silence is all-consuming, almost startling – until nervous whispers and the rhythmic staccato of camera shutters start piercing the Zen.
“Lion dynamics are fascinating. They’re ruthless,” a hushed voice jolts me back into the moment. “Their focus is survival.
” Oh yes, of course, the lions. There they are, a trio of strapping young males with manes gleaming in the early light, striding purposefully across the savannah and right into my meditative trance. Some of my best thinking unfolds during game drives.
There’s something so elemental about the raw, majestic wilderness, the serenity, the awareness of just how insignificant you are in a world where lions amble past. In fact, at this very moment, I can see their breath misting in the crisp, southern-hemisphere autumn air – without deigning to even sniff in your general direction; it just clears your mind and flings open your chakras. Sure, downloading the Calm app in the comfort of my home would probably be a significantly cheaper path to mindfulness, but I’ve instead acquired the expensive habit of pursuing it in plush safari lodges in the remotest reaches of the African continent.
“Three male lions in that scenery and with that light – it doesn’t get better than that,” says my ranger, Jacques. While everyone around me zooms and clicks, I sit back and stare, transfixed: by the way the light gilds their coats, their sinews ripple, their tails flicker in concert, and their ears twitch while they survey the horizon for signs of prey, and how the leader of the pack squints and blinks as his eyes adjust to the sunshine. A lilac-breasted roller flits past, and somewhere overhead a snake eagle soars.
To slow down and be wholly present in this moment, in this place, on this day, having come from a New York spring, across the equator to a southern hemisphere autumn, there’s nothing like it. Jacques is a ranger at Royal Malewane in Thornybush, a private game reserve on the outskirts of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, where it is all too common for a pride of lions, crash of rhinos, dazzle of zebras or journey of giraffes to interject themselves into my deepest moments of contemplation and make me feel electrifyingly alive. Glimpses of the Big Five – rhino, lion, buffalo, elephant and leopard – are all but guaranteed in this wildlife-rich region, and they are paired with some of the most sumptuous sanctuaries in the bush.
At Royal Malewane’s four camps scattered across the reserve – Malewane Lodge, Waterside, Farmstead and Africa House – fine art and fine wine are ubiquitous, and curious nyalas sipping from pools next to the spa’s floor-to-ceiling windows add a delightfully invasive touch to massage sessions. Somewhere during those long drives, contemplating the grand spectacle of the animal kingdom, and my gratitude at being granted a minor role as an interloper, I was mesmerised. Malewane Lodge, it so happens, is where I first discovered my love for safari and all its meditative benefits.
Twelve years ago, during my inaugural foray into the African bush, I was an avowed city girl, more in my element in jungles of concrete. But perhaps I wasn’t entirely to blame; back home in New York, nature mostly consisted of little patches of flowers breaking up the pavements, provided I could glimpse them over mountains of rubbish bags obscuring my view; wildlife, when I encountered it, was typically in the form of a voluptuous rat rampaging amid said bags. But as I planned a holiday in Cape Town, I decided it would be a shame to travel all that way and not cross safari off my bucket list.
I slipped a two-night stay at Royal Malewane into my itinerary, figuring it was just enough time to get a taste of lions, but not long enough for the lions to get a taste of me. The tiny thatched-roof safari terminal at Johannesburg’s airport served as my portal into the natural realm, sending me off on a series of puddle-jumpers that would deposit me on a dusty airstrip in the middle of the bush. As far as safari debuts go, Malewane Lodge – a favourite of Bono, Justin Bieber and Elton John – was not, in hindsight, the best place to start; it left me with an outlandish set of expectations that future safari camps I’d visit would struggle to live up to.
Surely all lodges are outfitted with wood-carved antiques, Persian rugs, lofty four-poster beds and showers that could be easily mistaken for a car wash, I surmised. But even amid such over-the-top environs, the ethereal brushstrokes of nature outshone it all, from the stealthy leopard we stumbled onto just outside the gate moments into our first game drive to the mischievous lion cubs that charmed me on my final morning. I walked past nyalas sipping from the vases by my villa on my way to breakfast and shooed away monkeys eyeing my eggs Benedict from trees ringing the terrace.
An hour spent following an endangered white rhino as he slowly waddled down a dirt road felt like a profound blessing; at another point our vehicle was completely surrounded by what can only be described as an elephant party: a herd of dancing, frolicking, playing pachyderms just steps away from us. Never had I been so appreciative of an exclusive invite (and never had I been so concerned about being potentially trampled by my hosts). Somewhere during those long drives, contemplating the grand spectacle of the animal kingdom, and my gratitude at being granted a minor role as an interloper, I was mesmerised.
By the last day, when I stepped onto the deck to take in the sunrise, I didn’t even flinch when a spider fell from a branch and bounced off my head. Since that eye-opening introduction to the bush, I’ve scarcely needed much convincing to return to the wild as often as possible, exploring diverse ecosystems across Africa and South Asia on some two dozen safaris in a dozen years. I’ve skimmed along channels of Botswana’s Okavango Delta in a wooden mokoro, glided in a hot-air balloon above the wildebeest migration in Kenya’s Masai Mara, hiked into a volcanic crater filled with flamingos in Tanzania and galloped across the vivid red sands of the Kalahari in South Africa on horseback.
I’ve seen testy lions roaring and lusty elephants mating, and been close enough to tigers and leopards to drop my phone on their heads (I haven’t – yet). I’ve fallen asleep to the soundtrack of unidentified growls and grunts as I lay in a canvas tent in Central India, as much as sprawling villas in Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Namibia. And I’ve contemplated career milestones, nursed a broken heart and plotted cross-continental moves, all in the back of an open Land Cruiser.
But one thing I haven’t done? Gone back to the same place twice. As a wide-eyed novice in 2012, I had no way of knowing that Royal Malewane was no ordinary safari. Every time in the bush since then has been magical in its own way, but sometimes I’d check in to a beautifully designed lodge where game would be harder to come by; in others, I might glimpse throngs of animals on a staggering scale – thousands of buffaloes sunbathing en masse, a herd of 50 wild dogs, two dozen lions on the hunt – before retreating to more rustic dwellings.
At Malewane Lodge, details such as personalised menus and hot-water bottles slipped into blankets for chilly morning game drives spoiled me, as did casual encounters with leopards and cheetahs, which seemed so effortless there but then eluded me for numerous safaris to come. Eventually, many of these trips have begun blurring together in my memory in a seamless canvas of emerald and ochre, but every moment of those first two nights at Royal Malewane remains vividly etched in my mind. The brilliant green chameleon that my tracker, Wilson, improbably spotted clinging to a tree as we zoomed past it in the dark.
The wonder of arriving at a candlelit clearing where a gourmet bush dinner was served as lions and hyenas bellowed in the distance. And the shiver that ran down my spine on my last morning when ranger Juan Pinto, who is today Royal Malewane’s director of conservation, turned to me and whispered, “Let’s find some lions,” with a thrilling gleam in his eye. No roller coaster since has compared to the exhilarating twists and turns of that drive, thrashing through the farthest reaches of the reserve, and Juan didn’t take me back for my flight home until he delivered on his promise of finding me the last of my first Big Five.
So, earlier in the spring, I plotted a return to Royal Malewane with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. Sure, the property remains a safari-industry darling, with accolades and A-list guests aplenty, but what about myself? When I arrive, almost 12 years to the day from my first visit, the original Malewane Lodge looks just as I remember it: the mammoth wooden thrones at the entrance to the open-air lobby where I’d posed for pictures, the tables on the terrace overlooking the waterhole where the monkeys had vied for my breakfast. And there, too, is Juan, my old guide, who embraces me.
This time I’m staying at Africa House, Royal Malewane’s six-bedroom private villa with a vibrant colour palette, a koi pond and a gravity-defying pool that juts out into the bush – an audaciously bold retreat that makes the neutral-toned Malewane Lodge feel quaint and restrained by comparison. It’s when I fall back into the diurnal rhythms of safari – early morning game drives, a languid post-lunch repose by the pool or at the spa followed by afternoon tea, and evening drives broken up with sundowners in the bush – that I can see that my memory has not edited or embellished the reality. When I set out for my first game drive of this visit, the horizon is aflame but for a luminous sliver of moon suspended in the sky, and that familiar sense of awe descends.
This time, instead of leopards we stumble upon elephants right out of the gate, followed by rhinos soon after; the next morning, I’m joined by zebras, giraffes and wildebeests to catch the sunrise surrounded by marula and acacia trees, and in quick succession we find leopards, another elephant party and a pride of lions, this one the picture of domestic bliss. So much has happened in my life since that first visit. I’ve changed, the world has changed – but in the bush, life has carried on as it always has.
Returning to the place where my love for the wilderness was born forces me to reflect on how much remains the same, and how beautiful that is. Circle of life and all that. And I watch a new generation of impish lion cubs clamber over their indulgent mothers with a sense of wonder that is just as all-consuming in 2024 as it was in 2012.
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