Ten years ago, few people had heard of South Luangwa, and those who knew it talked about it as something strange, shrouded in mystery like the Bermuda Triangle or some majestic but treacherous mountain.  
As if there were age-old secrets
here that you actually feel
and breathe as you walk
the Valley floor.

Little had been recorded about its history, and only few people have
made their permanent home here. Disease, tsetse fly, crop-raiding elephants, seasonal flooding and searing heat contributed
to make this an
 inhospitable place.

Now inevitable progress has yanked the Valley into the present day and made it accessible to a wide public. But the magic remains. It’s a place we don’t know how to slot into our neatly categorized world.

Our world doesn’t prepare us for this - a place where wild animals walk through our days.  We don’t quite know what to expect of them, how to behave in front of them or how to read their intentions. We have lost the gift of communicating with them.

To watch a leopard hunt in the long grass, seeing him read the signs: an impala’s warning snort here, a bird taking off, the shift of the wind in the grass, reminds us that we, too, once were in tune with the natural universe around us.