Passport for the Soul

The African Safari. For many it’s the pinnacle of a lifetime’s worth of wanderlust, wrought in the childhood dreams of far away places and exotic animals. Like a magnet, the pervasive pull of the cradle of life draws people from around the world to its savannahs teaming with life and its breathtakingly endless African skies.

While each of our dreams about African varies from person to person, I would guess that the spirit of all our dreams remains the same: the opportunity to encounter some the rarest, most beautiful and dangerous animals in the world, the Big 5. But the safari promises not just an encounter, for any of us could get that at our local zoo, but an encounter with the Big 5 on the animals’ terms, in their habitat, in their home.

But as I travelled across that mighty continent, I realized that there was a catch, one that put a damper on my entire experience: Safaris can’t always deliver on their promises.

At first blush tracking the Big 5 across Africa seems like the adventure traveller’s dream, reliving the experiences of the early Western pioneers on this continent; hunting some of the most elusive animals the land has to offer…only this time snapping photos instead of firing bullets.

It’s a once in a lifetime experience, to be sure, but while it may seem strange to say, unlike travel focused on cultural or historical experiences, wildlife encounters tend to be considerably more fickle, and distinctly more prone to disappointment.

You see, when visiting the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia or the majestic pyramids of Giza you have a fairly reliable assurance that you will, in fact, see those things. Save for some civic upheaval, it would be rare to visit Cairo with the intention of seeing the pyramids or Siem Reap with the intention of seeing the temples only to find that the respective deserts and jungles had reclaimed their own.

It’s a problem made worse by the brochures and the documentaries, both of which show Africa in all its grandeur, implicitly promising the same experiences to anyone who journeys to the continent in search of the rarest of God’s creatures.

Couple that with the well-intentioned stories of the African guides, who spin tales about the pride of lions they spotted at this very spot only last week or the leopard they came across languorously sun bathing in that tree over there, and it seems to serve only as fuel for the disappointment that your experiences could have matched those, but didn’t.

Of course, my journey to South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia was not without its animal sightings, many of which were both awe-inspiring and amazing, but it’s the notable absence of the big cats—the lions, leopards, and cheetahs—that stand out in my memory. I left Africa with a gnawing feeling that the continent had failed to deliver on its implicit promises, failed to deliver the animals I wanted, and failed to meet my expectations.

But perhaps that’s really the travelling lesson to be learned out of all of this: travelling with expectations means travelling with disappointments, as perhaps its better to allow these countries, cultures, and animals to show you what they will, without imposing upon them your own wants, your own schedule, or your own to-do list.

Or perhaps it is that our travels simply can’t ever fully meet our expectations, a caveat of having to live with this insatiable wanderlust that will invariably lead me back to the cradle of the world, once again in search of Africa’s Big 5.