Where silence speaks and scents tell stories

Anyone’s first game drive is always exciting, whether it is on their first visit to Africa, or the first after having had to go home after the last visit. The Big Five looms on the horizon and excitement bubbles at the idea of spotting elephants, buffaloes, or maybe even a lion, leopard or rhino! But then, as the vehicle leaves the lodge, you are introduced by your guide and tracker to opening your senses and to appreciate the rest of what the wilderness has to offer.

A quick exercise explores breathing through your nose instead of through your mouth, noticing the different smells as the vehicle moves through various areas. The familiar scent of freshly trimmed grass may catch your attention, but this time it has been cut by a warthog feeding. New and unfamiliar smells stand out the most. A pile of elephant dung on the road has a surprisingly sweet smell and doesn’t particularly stink. The faint musky odour is explained as being from impalas that had spent the night in the adjacent clearing.

An opportunity presents itself and you sit quietly, listening, and potentially even cupping your ears and noticing the silence, loud with the calls and chirps of creatures or whispers of the wind in the grass. An insect chirps in the thorn tree next to you, almost drowning out the distant repetitive call of the ring-necked dove in the background. The most noticeable sound is the lack thereof.

We, humans, have built a world for ourselves where everything revolves around what we see. Bright cities with large billboards and signposts litter the routines of our daily lives. When we do use our noses, we overshadow the unwanted city smells by even more man-made spray bottles or incense of some sort. Most sounds we encounter are those that we prefer not to hear, and we often try to drown them out by loud music. We have taught ourselves to switch off our other senses and to rely on our sight alone.

All the smells and the noises we leave behind in civilisation - traffic, smog, dogs barking, chemicals, sirens and planes flying over, have left us trying to constantly block out white noise, trying to ignore what is around us. Yet here you are, in the middle of the African continent, somewhere in a place of paradise where life happens away from all the modern chaos, and where every sound, and every smell tell a story of what is around. A whole new world has opened up.