Leopard

My first memory of an 'encounter' with a leopard happened when I was five, when we were staying with friends of my parents' outside Kongwa in what is now Tanzania. They had recently arrived from England to open up a farm on what was then virgin African bush, and were living in huts. It was perfect leopard country, close bush with plenty of game, and the leopards came visiting the farm buildings because the owners had dogs, two huge great danes, and dog is one of the leopard's favourite meals. One night we heard one calling - more a cough than anything - just outside our sleeping hut, and I remember lying in my bed both terrified and excited.

Years later we journeyed to Namibia where we had a much closer encounter with a leopard which we disturbed while he was sleeping out the heat of the day under a thorn bush. He was beautiful, his baleful stare terrifying, except....

....we sat in the safety of a Land Rover and the leopard had seen tourists a thousand times before, so he simply lay down and went back to sleep.

It wasn't an impressive experience because the leopard lived in a large, fenced enclosure in a big cat rescue facility and was easily found because he wore a tracking device on a leather collar round his neck.

This is Dennis who runs the Etendeka concession in Namibia. We stayed a few nights at Etendeka and could happily have stayed forever. It's a lovely, very simple camp in a very remote and very spectacular part of Damaraland. At Etendeka each morning, reasonably early, visitors are invited to take a three-hour walk through the bush. On this occasion Dennis found the tracks of a leopard moving up this dried-out stream bed. They were, he said, an hour or so old. The leopard might be around the next corner.

We walked on, and I felt more aware of my surroundings, more alert and, somehow, more alive than I had felt in years.

The next day, as Dennis drove us up the same valley into the hills, we saw two leopards streak up the slope on the other side of the valley.