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The Bushveld

By Rachel Tobias

March 17^th, 2018

“Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer’s paradise, a hunter’s Valhalla, an escapist’s Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just ‘home.’ It is all these things but one thing: it is never dull.”

- Beryl Markham

We sit in silence, to listen. Only to listen. To the sounds of the day, the sounds of the night. To understand the power of the night sky, and solve riddles in the stars, riddles that point you home. From the silence emerges perception: what you know is there, but cannot see. The guttural tremble of the earth’s largest walking mammal. The humbling presence of an elusive cat. The indistinguishable symphony of birds, beyond the branches. The carnivorous cackle of the hyena, always the uninvited guest. And if you’re lucky, the powerful pirouette of air beneath the wings of a great, flying ground hornbill. Here, you come to understand wild. And freedom. And everything we were meant to be, but have forgotten, amidst busy, and city, and us.

This place has transformed me. My time in the bushveld is limited to two short trips to the Timbavati, a small private game reserve that sits adjacent, and unfenced, to Kruger National Park. My home there has been Tanda Tula, a very special, family-owned tented lodge with unbelievable heart.