SilverImages

By SilverImages

Malvern hills, or Arusha?

"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills" Isak Dinesen (pseudonym of Karen Blixen) 
When I saw this photograph I'd taken of the Malvern Hills I was transported back over thirty years to a safari holiday in Tanzania and Kenya, the landscape (in black and white) just oozed east Africa for me. I could almost hear our Kikuyu guide Suzy singing for us around our night-time camp fire on the lip of Ngorongoro crater at an elevation of about 7,500 ft, the dirt track we'd travelled snaking down the flanks of the crater to the endless plains below. Distant grey cones outlined the tree clad slopes of once active volcanoes, or those still active like Ol Doinyo Lengai, "Mountain of God". We travelled in old Bedford army truck painted pink and slept in small tents that we pitched (and packed up to move on the next day) in the camp "sites" - i.e. somewhere in the open countryside. Hurricane lamps were hung from trees around the camp in Amboseli to divert the wandering herds of elephant from flattening our camp in their night-time foraging. Our evening meals sat on fallen tree trunks around the camp fire were often spied upon by the glowing coals of hyena eyes in the blackness beyond the camp fire light. It was magical!

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