Episode 4 The Riverbed
At dawn we tumble out of our tents, while the stars still blaze in a halo above us.
I'm ashamed to admit that I'm travelling with a pink carry-on bag that was all I could find last minute, which couldn't look more incongruous amidst the camping gear.
That fucking bag looks like you're going to New York, says Alex.
There is an almost constant which I believe the British define as verbal abuse as a sign of closeness.
James emerges from Papi's, his pup tent that looks like it's been through a hurricane. Our camp looks like we were shipwrecked. We were all way more focused on tracking than the general aesthetic of our camp, and it shows. Last night, Alex had made a stew from a food sock, inverted commas, that he bought at a camping shop.
It was totally inedible. Gruel, I tell you.
You should know not to buy something called a food sock.
It tasted more like a hiking sock," he shoots back.
The result was a night eating zorbs. A zorb is defined as any sandwich your mother would kick you out the house for making. Some classic zorbs include peanut butter and polchards.
Get out of my house.
Baked beans, gherkins and chutney, banned from the kitchen for life.
But we'll make any sandwich It's wild one week. What we do from here, says James, is we drop into the Huab River and look for those elephants. The Huab River is an ephemeral river that runs for 300 kilometers from Kambanyap to the coast.
Many rivers in Namibia flash flood briefly after heavy rains, as many unfortunate campers have discovered when they wake up confused to be floating down the river in one of the driest places on earth.
When the rivers are not flooding, their soft level sandy beds are a highway for animals and human travel.
The underground water means suddenly in the middle of the desert, huge acacia thorn trees rise up as if on a flood plain.
And it is this abundance of foliage and ease of path that draws the elephants. The first picture I ever saw of the desert elephants was in a National Geographic when I was 10.
And they stayed in my mind all these years.
The image was of a herd of elephants sliding on their bums down a sandy dune into a riverbed.
And I've wanted to see those elephants ever since that moment. We load the vehicle up and begin the search for an entrance to the river.
This is made challenging by recent floods cutting a steep bank. We have to drive upstream a long way before finding an entry point. The minute we drop into the riverbed, I feel we've been teleported to some other part of Africa.
It feels like mana pools or some sections of the Okavango Delta.
The desert is gone.
The going is easy as the vehicle surfs through the soft sand.
Tracks start appearing in the perfect substrate.
A spotted hyena, loping. Signs of a small of baboons moving from camel-thorn to camel-thorn, snacking on the tree's sweet pods. There are old elephant tracks from days gone past. We make our way down the river and suddenly there are dinner-sized fresh tracks of a bull elephant from some time in the early morning. These tracks are from this morning, says Alex. I think this bull might be trailing the herd that came here a few days ago.
I cut onto the tracks and begin to follow them towards where the river bends up ahead.
Alex and James are behind me inspecting small tracks and taking photos.
There is a haze in the air and a silence that only the desert offers up.
I can hear my own feet crunching in the sand and the quiet chatter of my friends behind me.
The tracks are easy to follow.
I move on them to the bend in the river.
Rounding the corner, I catch sight of a huge bull standing in an island of camel thorn trees right in the center of the river. I've often believed that elephants emit the tone of om.
In their presence, I feel an almost vibratory quality into my body.
as if someone nearby has struck a giant gong. The faint electricity in my body arrives almost the second I become aware of the elephant's presence.
The bull feeds slowly through the thorn grove, silently, moving with an almost sensual grace.
He is the confluence of where in Zen mindfulness gives way to emptiness. Presence without past or future or verbal mind. The elephant is being an elephant. I turn to Alex and James, who are still rounding the bend, and give them the universal signal for elephant, flapping my hands next to my ears as if they are a giant imaginary pair of ears next to my head. They both walk faster. The bull turns, ambling across the riverbed, moving almost as if in slow motion, and we are his silent witnesses. He makes his way to the sharp exit in the riverbed, and here he mounts the bank vertically. Red dust explodes around his huge body as he drives his legs upwards. It has the same awe-inspiring feeling denying quality of a jumbo jet taking off. As he rises out of the river, the high mountains of the desert frame his giant form, and I am struck silent with awe. I am tiny, and yet I am, in this instant, also a part of the grandeur of all life. My body is full of the same current that animates elephants. As he crests the final section of the bank, his bum underneath him.
He looks certain to topple backwards.
His trunk acts as a counterbalance.
For a second, he hangs in the haze, seesawing between the river and the high bank, and I'm certain he will crash backwards. He heaves. The dust explodes again, and he sails upwards onto the high bank and is gone in a puff of fine dust.
Elephant Ninja Bomb Alex is smirking from ear to ear.
James shoots the whole scene with his camera.
And I'm reminded of an old truth. Nature never disappoints.
When I was a young child in Africa, I thought the horizons of experiences and importance was in the first world.
I thought what I was looking for, who I was looking for, the impact I dreamed of was always somewhere else. Somewhere over there. In some ways I guess this is quite normal for a young man from a relative backwater. If I have matured at all it's that I have become clearer on knowing what to want and generally my greatest sobriety and maturity is to stop thinking the important cool fun things are happening somewhere else.
My gravity is back The things I want my son to know are more here. Elephants, empty spaces, campfires, places with no Wi-Fi.
Life closer to the inner wild one. From this incredible encounter, we drive down the river at a good clip. Soon more elephants appear, and here, closer to the main road, also tourist cars.
I see tourists from Sweden and the proverbial hunts from Holland, eagerly photographing these regal animals.
Africa's wild places still have a profound pull, and I hope more people will come.
I hope more places will be protected for future generations.
There is a strange moment when a young bull elephant walks up to the back of our vehicle and begins to chew on the rooftop tent in a totally playful way.
We eventually have to drive off to prevent tusk cleaving the tent open like a tin opener.
Soon we're back on the main road.
We've had an incredible 24 hours of rhino tracking and elephant encounters.
When James was a young boy, his parents took him to a crystal pool of water in the middle of a small rocky desert outcrop called Onggong Pool.
We decide to go and camp there.
We are dusty.
We smell bad.
10:28 - Unidentified Speaker
but soon we are swimming in the green, cool pool in a profoundly dry land.
10:34 - Unidentified Speaker
For James, I sense there is a nostalgia to being in Namibia.
10:38 - Unidentified Speaker
As a child, his parents brought him on trips where they still navigated with a compass through the vastness.
10:45 - Unidentified Speaker
As he swims, he points out an old rock fig growing out of the waterfall above the pool.
10:50 - Unidentified Speaker
That fig was here when I was a child.
10:53 - Unidentified Speaker
We used to climb it I know what he means.
10:57 - Unidentified Speaker
There is something comforting about old things.
11:00 - Unidentified Speaker
In this way, Namibia is a profound comfort.
11:04 - Unidentified Speaker
It helps me rest into the feeling that nature doesn't care.
11:09 - Unidentified Speaker
Our time scales are so self-important.
11:12 - Unidentified Speaker
Our 70 80 or 90 years is sweet to nature's scale of unfolding.
11:19 - Unidentified Speaker
Might be the next trend, but nature is the eternal trend.
11:24 - Unidentified Speaker
The world will reset time and time again.
The fig tree will creep along the rocks.
Humanity will come and go.
The desert
At dawn we tumble out of our tents, while the stars still blaze in a halo above us.
I'm ashamed to admit that I'm travelling with a pink carry-on bag that was all I could find last minute, which couldn't look more incongruous amidst the camping gear.
That fucking bag looks like you're going to New York, says Alex.
There is an almost constant which I believe the British define as verbal abuse as a sign of closeness.
James emerges from Papi's, his pup tent that looks like it's been through a hurricane. Our camp looks like we were shipwrecked. We were all way more focused on tracking than the general aesthetic of our camp, and it shows. Last night, Alex had made a stew from a food sock, inverted commas, that he bought at a camping shop.
It was totally inedible. Gruel, I tell you.
You should know not to buy something called a food sock.
It tasted more like a hiking sock," he shoots back.
The result was a night eating zorbs. A zorb is defined as any sandwich your mother would kick you out the house for making. Some classic zorbs include peanut butter and polchards.
Get out of my house.
Baked beans, gherkins and chutney, banned from the kitchen for life.
But we'll make any sandwich It's wild one week. What we do from here, says James, is we drop into the Huab River and look for those elephants. The Huab River is an ephemeral river that runs for 300 kilometers from Kambanyap to the coast.
Many rivers in Namibia flash flood briefly after heavy rains, as many unfortunate campers have discovered when they wake up confused to be floating down the river in one of the driest places on earth.
When the rivers are not flooding, their soft level sandy beds are a highway for animals and human travel.
The underground water means suddenly in the middle of the desert, huge acacia thorn trees rise up as if on a flood plain.
And it is this abundance of foliage and ease of path that draws the elephants. The first picture I ever saw of the desert elephants was in a National Geographic when I was 10.
And they stayed in my mind all these years.
The image was of a herd of elephants sliding on their bums down a sandy dune into a riverbed.
And I've wanted to see those elephants ever since that moment. We load the vehicle up and begin the search for an entrance to the river.
This is made challenging by recent floods cutting a steep bank. We have to drive upstream a long way before finding an entry point. The minute we drop into the riverbed, I feel we've been teleported to some other part of Africa.
It feels like mana pools or some sections of the Okavango Delta.
The desert is gone.
The going is easy as the vehicle surfs through the soft sand.
Tracks start appearing in the perfect substrate.
A spotted hyena, loping. Signs of a small of baboons moving from camel-thorn to camel-thorn, snacking on the tree's sweet pods. There are old elephant tracks from days gone past. We make our way down the river and suddenly there are dinner-sized fresh tracks of a bull elephant from some time in the early morning. These tracks are from this morning, says Alex. I think this bull might be trailing the herd that came here a few days ago.
I cut onto the tracks and begin to follow them towards where the river bends up ahead.
Alex and James are behind me inspecting small tracks and taking photos.
There is a haze in the air and a silence that only the desert offers up.
I can hear my own feet crunching in the sand and the quiet chatter of my friends behind me.
The tracks are easy to follow.
I move on them to the bend in the river.
Rounding the corner, I catch sight of a huge bull standing in an island of camel thorn trees right in the center of the river. I've often believed that elephants emit the tone of om.
In their presence, I feel an almost vibratory quality into my body.
as if someone nearby has struck a giant gong. The faint electricity in my body arrives almost the second I become aware of the elephant's presence.
The bull feeds slowly through the thorn grove, silently, moving with an almost sensual grace.
He is the confluence of where in Zen mindfulness gives way to emptiness. Presence without past or future or verbal mind. The elephant is being an elephant. I turn to Alex and James, who are still rounding the bend, and give them the universal signal for elephant, flapping my hands next to my ears as if they are a giant imaginary pair of ears next to my head. They both walk faster. The bull turns, ambling across the riverbed, moving almost as if in slow motion, and we are his silent witnesses. He makes his way to the sharp exit in the riverbed, and here he mounts the bank vertically. Red dust explodes around his huge body as he drives his legs upwards. It has the same awe-inspiring feeling denying quality of a jumbo jet taking off. As he rises out of the river, the high mountains of the desert frame his giant form, and I am struck silent with awe. I am tiny, and yet I am, in this instant, also a part of the grandeur of all life. My body is full of the same current that animates elephants. As he crests the final section of the bank, his bum underneath him.
He looks certain to topple backwards.
His trunk acts as a counterbalance.
For a second, he hangs in the haze, seesawing between the river and the high bank, and I'm certain he will crash backwards. He heaves. The dust explodes again, and he sails upwards onto the high bank and is gone in a puff of fine dust.
Elephant Ninja Bomb Alex is smirking from ear to ear.
James shoots the whole scene with his camera.
And I'm reminded of an old truth. Nature never disappoints.
When I was a young child in Africa, I thought the horizons of experiences and importance was in the first world.
I thought what I was looking for, who I was looking for, the impact I dreamed of was always somewhere else. Somewhere over there. In some ways I guess this is quite normal for a young man from a relative backwater. If I have matured at all it's that I have become clearer on knowing what to want and generally my greatest sobriety and maturity is to stop thinking the important cool fun things are happening somewhere else.
My gravity is back The things I want my son to know are more here. Elephants, empty spaces, campfires, places with no Wi-Fi.
Life closer to the inner wild one. From this incredible encounter, we drive down the river at a good clip. Soon more elephants appear, and here, closer to the main road, also tourist cars.
I see tourists from Sweden and the proverbial hunts from Holland, eagerly photographing these regal animals.
Africa's wild places still have a profound pull, and I hope more people will come.
I hope more places will be protected for future generations.
There is a strange moment when a young bull elephant walks up to the back of our vehicle and begins to chew on the rooftop tent in a totally playful way.
We eventually have to drive off to prevent tusk cleaving the tent open like a tin opener.
Soon we're back on the main road.
We've had an incredible 24 hours of rhino tracking and elephant encounters.
When James was a young boy, his parents took him to a crystal pool of water in the middle of a small rocky desert outcrop called Onggong Pool.
We decide to go and camp there.
We are dusty.
We smell bad.
10:28 - Unidentified Speaker
but soon we are swimming in the green, cool pool in a profoundly dry land.
10:34 - Unidentified Speaker
For James, I sense there is a nostalgia to being in Namibia.
10:38 - Unidentified Speaker
As a child, his parents brought him on trips where they still navigated with a compass through the vastness.
10:45 - Unidentified Speaker
As he swims, he points out an old rock fig growing out of the waterfall above the pool.
10:50 - Unidentified Speaker
That fig was here when I was a child.
10:53 - Unidentified Speaker
We used to climb it I know what he means.
10:57 - Unidentified Speaker
There is something comforting about old things.
11:00 - Unidentified Speaker
In this way, Namibia is a profound comfort.
11:04 - Unidentified Speaker
It helps me rest into the feeling that nature doesn't care.
11:09 - Unidentified Speaker
Our time scales are so self-important.
11:12 - Unidentified Speaker
Our 70 80 or 90 years is sweet to nature's scale of unfolding.
11:19 - Unidentified Speaker
Might be the next trend, but nature is the eternal trend.
11:24 - Unidentified Speaker
The world will reset time and time again.
The fig tree will creep along the rocks.
Humanity will come and go.
The desert
