Lion 's Lunch

Man is the Only Animal That Runs When We Don’t Have to. Perhaps We Have to.

- Ryan Scott

For over a decade now, I’ve been writing about the discovery of new places via the freedom of running: you’re free to follow your nose, turn up any street, duck under chains, squeeze through alleyways…

Early mornings in Zurich, Barcelona and Rome, the old Stonetown in Zanzibar, and many a mountain-top town in the Alps – I’ve left footprints on them all.

SERENGETI SURPRISE

So while visiting the Serengeti this year, I thought I’d apply the same philosophy.

But although I squeezed a pair of running shoes in with my safari boots, none of the camps I was staying in had perimeter fences to keep the wild out; so I assumed my morning run would have to be scrapped.

At night the lions roared just metres away from our camp. And when the king of the jungle was not on song, the unruly peasant hyenas laughed their way through the night – sometimes walking right through our camp.