How this South African game reserve sparked our love of safari – and its unexpected meditative benefits
- Over a decade ago, we had our very first encounter with Africa’s Big Five at Royal Malewane – we paid a return visit to see if the magic still remained
As far as backdrops for a meditation session go, this one is particularly scenic: dawn has just begun to unravel over a vast grassy plain and in the distance, a mountain range reveals its silhouette under the opalescent glow of the rising sun. Leaves ripple in the breeze as I breathe in the pristine air, lulling myself towards transcendence. The silence is all-consuming, almost startling – until nervous whispers and the rhythmic staccato of camera shutters start piercing the Zen.
“Lion dynamics are fascinating. They’re ruthless,” a hushed voice jolts me back into the moment. “Their focus is survival.”
Oh yes, of course, the lions. There they are, a trio of strapping young males with manes gleaming in the early light, striding purposefully across the savannah and right into my meditative trance.
Some of my best thinking unfolds during game drives. There’s something so elemental about the raw, majestic wilderness, the serenity, the awareness of just how insignificant you are in a world where lions amble past without deigning to even sniff in your general direction. At this very moment, they’re so close I can see their breath misting in the crisp, southern- hemisphere autumn air. There’s no better way to clear your mind and fling open your chakras. Sure, downloading the Calm app in the comfort of my home would probably be a significantly cheaper path to mindfulness, but I’ve instead acquired the expensive habit of pursuing it in plush safari lodges in the remotest reaches of the African continent.
“Three male lions in that scenery and with that light – it doesn’t get better than that,” says my ranger, Jacques Briam. While everyone around me zooms and clicks, I sit back and stare, transfixed: by the way the light gilds their coats, their sinews ripple, their tails flicker in concert, and their ears twitch while they survey the horizon for signs of prey, and how the leader of the pack squints and blinks as his eyes adjust to the sunshine. A lilac-breasted roller flits past, and somewhere overhead a snake eagle soars. To slow down and be wholly present in this moment, in this place, on this day, having come from a New York spring, across the equator to a southern hemisphere autumn, there’s nothing like it.
