Guest blog by Dianne Tipping-woods of Writing Wild.
“Sit quietly; they’re just curious,” said guide Brenden Pienaar. He had three spotted hyenas in the beam of his powerful torch. We watched them, watching us. For a moment, they stopped, raised their noses and sniffed. Then, they ambled slowly away. Nobody had their camera ready, but this evening greeting from the hyenas wasn’t something you could capture in pixels and megabytes. “It could have been lions,” said Brenden. On his first trail here in 2023 three males had checked them out, and moved on.
Slowly shining the torch 360 degrees, I wondered, was this wild, exposed spot in the Kalahari where we planned to sleep the find of the century? Or madness?
It was the last night of our four day trail with Lowveld Trails Company through the 100 000 hectare !Khamab Kalahari Reserve, a vast area on the border of South Africa and Botswana. We had no tents, ablutions or cellphones and just what we could carry in our backpacks.
Before the hyenas came past, we’d listened to leviathan-like sounds of white rhino bulls fighting somewhere beyond the range of our torches. And before that, as the sun set, we’d set up camp on a drying calcrete pan; a vast, wild tapestry studded with gemsbok, springbok, eland and wildebeest. We could smell the dust they kicked up and hear their noisy hooves and conversational grunts all around us.
We’d come a long way since our first night, when we’d taken off our dusty boots, laid out our sleeping mats and tried to make ourselves at home in this semi-arid wilderness. “Each of us is going to spend about an hour on night watch, checking nothing takes us by surprise”, Brendan had explained earlier. But he’d also he’d told us to leave our watches behind.
On my shift, somewhere between midnight and dawn, I had jumped at the piercing call of a barn owl. Some leaves had rustled. Then a roar rippled through the darkness. Lions! They’re Africa’s apex predator, known for their strength, stealth and nighttime hunting prowess. We’d talked about the Kalahari’s famous black-maned lions, and desert specials like bat-eared foxes and gemsbok that we might see. Encounters on foot are one of the reasons people go on trails like this, and I’d hoped we’d find a big cat or two. Suddenly I was less sure.
How long is an hour when you’re outside of time? When lions are roaring?
I put a scavenged piece of hardwood onto a small pile of glowing coals. Counted each breath – in 2,3,4,5, out 2,3,4,5. Shone the torch over the sleeping forms around me; 7 guests and 2 armed guides. Watched shooting stars. Listened to my heartbeat. Tried to judge where the lions were. Being on nature’s clock was disconcerting. Uncomfortable.
The Kalahari after dark is very different to the golden landscape studded with camelthorns and shepherd trees that we’d reached after our first few kilometres of walking. It was a place Brenden calls Magic Vlakte, a remote section of the already remote reserve as far from tourist roads and camp amenities as possible. These three-night trails are the wildest way to discover this arid landscape’s fascinating flora and fauna. The Malopo River changed course 2 to 5 million years ago, and its remnants are a seasonal network of pans amidst the red sand that’s up to 200m deep in places. And yet it supports enormous herds of zebras, springbok, wildebeest, rhinos, buffalos and even elephants. “It’s not just about seeing animals, looking for tracks and learning about trees and plants, but also about the stars, the space, and the time without e-mail, telephones or other civilized conveniences,” said Brenden at our pre-trail briefing. He has a satellite phone but only turns it on when someone’s life is in danger.
After what I thought was an hour, I woke the next person up for their watch, and wrestled myself into my sleeping bag on the ground. I was sure I wouldn’t sleep but woke up later to a faint orange tinge on the horizon. The long first night was almost over, and the lions were still roaring.
We spent most of that morning silently tracking the big cats. Brenden was completely at home in the landscape of his childhood. His mother had been a teacher at a mine in Botswana, and the Kalahari had been his playground. Since then, the FGASA Scout has walked more hours in the wilderness than almost anyone else in the business and earned the qualifications and reputation as one of Africa’s best guides and mentors. We never found the lions, but that hardly mattered. The experience of tracking them was all-absorbing. We’d entered a relationship with them the minute we’d picked up their tracks in the red oxide sand.
Wildlife encounters on these trails can be spectacular, but their transformative potential comes from activities like tracking and what Brenden describes as “genius loci, or spirit of place”, and the qualities inherent to true wilderness. These include silence, darkness, a pristine environment, solitude as an individual and isolation as a group. With the pared-down simplicity of carrying all you need on your back, they help facilitate a connection to nature that shorter, more activity-driven experiences can’t achieve.
“On safari, we can become obsessed with moving from activity to activity or sighting to sighting. When you constantly move from one moment to the next, you lose the present and your ability to be in it. Because of their very nature, though, multi-day wilderness trails are one long moment,” he explained.
Although he’s walked in Rwanda’s Akagera National Park, Kruger National Park’s Mphongolo and other wilderness areas on hundreds of trails, he’s still humbled by how the experience affects him and others. He discussed the transformative potential of trails with psychiatrist and wilderness philosopher Ian McCallum while establishing Lowveld Trails Co., the business he runs with Tamsyn Pienaar and Wayne Te Brake. “The most endangered or scarce phenomenon of our time is the experience of wilderness. None of our technologies, virtual reality, augmented reality, or documentaries, can substitute for time spent in the wild and how it can benefit us,” said the analyst and poet in a discussion about Lowveld Trails Company’s values. “People today are lonely and isolated. So much travel is bug-free, high-end and disconnected. Whatever happens around you is just something to look at,” said Ian.
The Kalahari wasn’t bug-free. We tried to scrupulously avoid the tampan ticks that hide from the sun in the deep sand. And it wasn’t high-end. The nights were cold, the ground was hard and we had a spade and a facecloth for our ablutions. “The whole facilitation process is about creating space. Not occupying the space or insisting on anything. I take a step back and allow the intrinsic qualities of the landscape to affect people,” said Brenden. The trail is not tied to any religion. Its spiritual aspects are more about connecting with yourself, the landscape and your belief system. People can have moments of radical insight, but it’s not compulsory.
One of Brenden’s facilitation tools that can help create these moments is what he calls the laws of the wild. “Think about the lions we were tracking and their defensive behaviours. The fifth law of the wild says, “avoid unnecessary conflict, but if you pick a fight, be clear about what you’re defending. Your cubs. Your kill. Your territory. Your values?” It wasn’t just about the lions anymore.
Brenden is well-versed in the positive psychological effects of wilderness experiences. But he’s also become fascinated by the idea that it may impact people’s neurochemistry. “It’s difficult to tell people what you experienced. I’ve been thinking about this in the context of a mystical experience. And the significant thing about a mystical experience is that it changes thought patterns. By providing someone with a mystical experience, could you positively impact their overall well-being at a neurochemical level?”
That night, after a few attempts, we got a coal glowing with pieces of wood, dried elephant dung and a wispy nest of a ‘blousysie’. The first occupants of this land could keep such a coal glowing for days in a ‘tonteldoos’, a gourd with a bed of zebra or buffalo faeces. Our triumphant flame was dwarfed by a star-wrapped sky. Our sleeping circle was smaller than it had been. The intimacy had crept up on us.
“The imagined reality we live in is primarily driven by time – work hours and charging per hour, meeting times, school times, and load shedding times. We set our bodies to that instead of natural rhythms and cycles. To not have to live by the clock, even if it is just for a short period, is good for us,” said Brenden while some bat-eared foxes scampered around our campsite. We understood what he meant because we could feel it. An hour had become a fluid concept measured in the calls of pearl-spotted owlets, the number of shooting stars, the depth of our own patience. Free from our devices, we’d stepped out of time. Could we also have stepped into more authentic versions of ourselves?
On our final morning, tracks from a porcupine, a caracal and a leopard were on our path back to the vehicle. We stopped where a grasshopper had laid her eggs and watched a gabar goshawk hunting grey-backed sparrow larks. Still, for just a few minutes longer, out of time.
Where is the Trail, and when does the next one take place?
The Kalahari Primitive Trail takes place in the remote !Khamab Kalahari Reserve in North-West Province, South Africa – for private group bookings of up to 8 participants.
In 2025 this Trail is operational in April, May and September – there is an option to do a 3-night Trail or a back-to-back 6-night Trail.
