Episode 1 The History of Safari with Richard E Grant

This is safari in its heyday...

dangerous and bloody...

Yet romantic and luxurious.

The history of safari in Africa is a story that is far from simple.

It's entangled with the controversial story of white settlers,

colonial life and the spread of the British Empire.

As a white man born in Swaziland,

I've been on a journey through safari to try to understand

its complicated past and contentious present.

I've visited the most incredible landscapes and experienced

the thrills and seduction of wild animals first hand.

Jumbo, jumbo Kenya!...

Spectacular!

Look! There's a leopard, there's a leopard!

I've discovered that the story of safari is teeming

with extraordinary characters, wayward lifestyles and huge sex appeal.

So beds and hunting and safari were all shared in a very fluid way.

Absolutely...and no jealousy.

And I've tried to understand

why the excitement of hunting still draws passionate supporters.

There he is.

That was a lovely bull!

My journey has shown me that, ultimately,

safari is about exhilaration and freedom.

It's been the adventure of a lifetime.

In 1896, the British East African government

started building a railway line from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast,

through Kenya, to Uganda.

As the Empire expanded,

a trade route to the heart of Africa was deemed vital.

Nicknamed "The Lunatic Express", the line opened in 1903

and was soon transporting wealthy British adventurers

in search safari and big game hunting.

Nairobi became the main station.

It's here I begin my own safari.

Nairobi began in 1899.

It was as a simple railway depot on the Lunatic Railway Express.

Back then, zebra, lions, wildebeest, giraffes

roamed the dust track that pass the main street.

What initially began as a few huts and basic infrastructure,

then developed into a city that was never planned.

By 1907, it was declared the official capital of British East Africa.

Nairobi has grown into a noisy, chaotic city of over 2 million people.

But just minutes from the busy city centre

is a peaceful glimmer of a British colonial past.

This is the legendary Norfolk Hotel.

I've come to Kenya to find out about the history of safari

and how it is entwined with the controversy of a colonial past.

And The Norfolk is the perfect place to start.

Welcome to The Norfolk, I'm Richard Kinyemi, the manager.

Thank you, I'm Richard, too.

This mock Tudor edifice opened for business on Christmas Day in 1904

and was the place for wealthy Brits to begin their safari.

The Norfolk offered elegance and luxury in the wilds of Africa.

It represents how the British were keen to transfer

their entire lifestyle into the African bush.

The exotic opulence was a huge draw to the British colonists,

some of whom became notorious for their errant ways.

So, this was the epicentre of colonial life?

Colonial life, because here we used to have cottages

where they use to play billiards and wife swapping and all that,

according to the history.

And that doesn't happen now?

-There's no wife swapping now in Nairobi.

-Not any more!

Welcome. This is your suite.

Thank you very much.

Oh, wow!

-So welcome. Here...

-Oh, high luxury thank you, Richard.

-Your bedroom is over here.

-An oasis in the middle of Nairobi.

Thank you very much, I wish you a very good stay with us.

Overlooking the hotel, the main court here.

The grandeur and pomp of the Norfolk

is timelessly British and reminds me of my own history.

What I'm always struck by is how extraordinary

the contrast is between coming in on that train from Mombasa,

crowded with people, and the chaos of Nairobi traffic

where people don't stop for red lights or pedestrian crossings.

It's sort of higgledy-piggledy organised chaos.

And then you come through the Norfolk Hotel,

a bastion of colonialism.

And I suppose my upbringing in Swaziland

in the lasts gasps of empire.

I suppose, to my shame, I grew up in a household where we had servants

a cook, a housekeeper, two gardeners.

I couldn't even boil an egg when I went to university, burnt toast.

So to come back here as a white boy coming back to Africa

and the history of safari, it's a complete circle journey to go through.

I don't know how much you can, cat of nine tails

and lash yourself for colonial guilt.

Growing up in Swaziland meant living in a society

that was British in the extreme.

My father was head of education for the colonial administration.

Throughout my childhood, we regularly went on photo safaris,

as well as hunting trips with my father for venison,

though I never shot an animal myself.

The idea of hunting for pleasure never appealed,

but I want to know why it was so important to the early settlers

and what involvement the indigenous African people had.

To find out, I need to go back to the very beginnings of safari.

Safari derives from the Swahili word meaning "journey"

and was originally used to describe the trade routes

used by coastal Arabs and Swahilis who transported ivory,

rhino horn and slaves from the African interior to the Asian market.

The trade routes were extremely lucrative

and attracted the attentions of powerful European countries,

eager to get their hands on them.

This resulted in what became known as the "Scramble for Africa"

and, in 1885, at the Berlin Conference,

European leaders met to divide up Africa into independent spheres

of influence under European rule.

Britain bagged Uganda and Kenya which all came under British protectorate rule

and were christened British East Africa.

The newly acquired lands were vast with an abundance

of wildlife that the British government had big plans for.

They began advertising back home for the British aristocracy

to begin a pioneering new way of life and money-making enterprise.

In the early 1900s, British East Africa

proved an irresistible draw to the aristocracy back home.

They could come out here and buy hundreds of acres of land cheaply,

build homes at little cost, employ local people to work for them

whilst enjoying an idyllic year round temperate climate.

One of the first and most controversial British settlers

to take up the challenge was Hugh Cholomondeley,

the third Baron Delamere.

Lord Delamere acquired 100,000 acres of land

close to the equator in 1901.

He arrived by train and disembarked

at this level crossing and declared that the open plains

stretching around him would be where he would build his first home

and business venture, Equator Ranch.

I'd arranged to meet Professor David Anderson of Oxford University

to find out how Lord Delamere became one of the leading lights of early settler life.

David, was this the original house?

This is a more modern construction, but this is where the farm was.

You're right in the centre of it here.

How brave or bold or foolhardy was it, in your opinion,

to come here and take over a thousand of acres of unoccupied land?

That's a great question because you look at it now

and think, "How in heaven's name did they do this?"

He arrived here with almost nothing

and he lived like a pauper for a couple of years.

So this is not a rich British aristocrat coming to play around in Africa,

this is someone who is down on his luck, having hard times,

coming to make a fresh start, and by God did he work at it.

So how did he plan to make money?

What did he try to farm?

Well, he brought out, initially he tried sheep on the farm

and that was quite a shrewd notion, this was not a bad area for sheep.

But he tried to bring in exotic stock from New Zealand

and they did OK at first, but then they all died

cos they contracted fevers and other diseases.

Then he bought in Herefordshire Bulls from the UK,

had them imported at huge expense.

He sent his stockmen off to New Zealand to buy some other stock.

He thought merino sheep would be better, he brought those in at vast expense.

Shipping stock half way around the world to come here in the middle of nowhere.

It's an astonishing adventure,

you might say misadventure because none of it worked.

But as well as being an entrepreneur,

Lord Delamere was also an enthusiastic hunter.

He had grown up in the British aristocratic tradition

and had also spent many years hunting elephants for ivory across the African continent,

before settling in British East Africa.

But when it came to clearing his newly acquired farmland of wildlife,

Lord Delamere seemed to take the sport of hunting into questionable territory.

So how notorious was he?

He was ambitious and energetic and it's an interesting story,

he got involved in a spat with Sir Harry Johnstone

who was the Governor of Uganda and he wrote a nasty letter to the Royal Geographical Society

accusing Delamere of hunting with a Gatling gun,

which is an early machine gun mounted on a ridge top

in North Baringo and sort of creaming out the elephants.

Now Delamere always denied this and said he hadn't done it,

but Johnstone really made a fuss about it

and some of the mud certainly stuck to Delamere's reputation early on.

-Was it true?

-It could have been because there were

a lot of hunters in those early days who were exploitative.

Mostly looking for adventure, looking for a quick buck.

They were a dangerous crew because they were keen to do well

and they were prepared to exploit in order to do well

and, by God, in Kenya they did that.

Lord Delamere undoubtedly set the tone for settler behaviour

by refusing to allow wildlife to get in the way of British enterprise.

To make the African lands suitable for farming,

the mass slaughter of big game animals began.

This was made an enjoyable and sportsmanlike experience

by introducing the custom of the hunt, with some early settlers

even importing packs of hunting hounds from England

and riding out on the African plains kitted in traditional pinks or scarlet jackets.

A contemporary of Delamere's in the early days

was fellow hunter and sportsman Lord Cranworth.

Cranworth was pivotal in encouraging more aristocrats

to join the settlement drive.

He believed that the hunting sportsman had a vital role

in making British East Africa a success

and wrote an extensive essay entitled A Colony In The Making

Or Sport and Profit In British East Africa.

In his essay, Lord Cranworth did all he could to encourage

fellow aristocrats to head out to British East Africa. He wrote...

"British East Africa forms, in some respects,

"the most peculiar of his Majesty's Dominions,

"in that within so comparatively small an area

"it embraces so much variety and possibilities for British enterprise."

He then went on to offer tips for new arrivals.

"Do yourself well on the food line.

"Take plenty of wine after sun fall, more especially burgundy and port.

"They enrich the blood and are agreeable to the palate.

"Bear in mind and act on the old maxim -

"keep the spirits up, the bowels open,

"and wear flannels next the skin."

Later on in the essay, Lord Cranworth's wife,

Lady Cranworth offered her, Hints For A Woman In British East Africa.

"Having arrived up country,

"about the first operation will be to collect one's staff of servants.

"When one becomes accustomed to the sight of black faces,

"native servants will be found very fairly good.

"They are quite intelligent and soon assimilate any knowledge

"that one is in a position to impart".

Lord Cranworth concluded with a rousing appeal to British big game hunters...

"Present is the day of the sportsman,

"of the man of riches, of the white hunter."

Gung ho and spirited, the early pioneering settlers may have been,

but they also felt completely assured

of their natural right to rule and to exhaustively exploit

every resource and the native peoples of British East Africa.

In 1907, Ewart Grogan, a well known figure in the early settler years,

publicly flogged three of his staff on the steps

of the Nairobi Courthouse, for frightening his niece

by driving his rickshaw too erratically.

Lord Cranworth wrote that he knowingly exploited

the Masai and Kikuyu tribes by trading cheap trinkets

and opera glasses in exchange for valuable ivory.

This is the image of colonialism

that makes me feel uncomfortable about my own past.

But to get a better understanding of the early settlers,

who were generations before my time,

I want to meet their descendants whom I hope can tell me more.

First up, is Tony Seth Smith, at his home on the shores of Lake Naivasha.

So Tony, correct me if I'm wrong,

your pa arrived here 106 years ago, which would make it 1904?

1904.

And his elder brother Martin had come out the year before.

Why did he come here in the first place?

I think for adventure and it was, I suppose,

one of the last frontiers, you know Canada had been opened up

and the west of the United States and Australia and so on...

so they were in on virgin ground as they saw it.

Do you feel that they had a sense of entitlement

in the spread of empire and that it wasn't questioned in any way?

I think to a degree, in as much as the country was untamed,

undeveloped and they were bringing development

and civilization as they saw it.

And so they had a moral edge on the people who were already here.

But I don't think they felt that they were taking it away from them.

I was born and brought up in Swaziland

and my father always said to me, "Even though you are born here,

"essentially as a white person, you are a guest in this country."

So, I always had, I suppose, a wobble in my mind about

whether owning land or not... Whether I had a right to do that.

-Has this ever crossed your mind at all?

-No.

Kenya was a colony and Swaziland was never a colony.

No, it was a protectorate.

We came and colonised this country,

the British plus a few Scandinavians and things.

And we were issued land, we paid for the land, they didn't take it,

but I think people like my father also had a degree of,

"I wonder if this is fair to the African?"

I often heard him say, "The poor African, he's getting the thin end of the wedge."

But, of course, as I say you've got to remember

that there were only 1.5 million of them at that time.

And now there are 40 million,

so people who want to be critical see the country as it is today and say,

"How could you come and take land when it is so congested

"and everyone is looking for a patch of land?"

Well, it wasn't like that then.

You've got to take things as they were at the time.

For Tony's father's generation of early 20th century settlers,

the extraordinary wildlife was little more than

a pest that stood in their way.

Getting rid of them

would give Tony his first exhilarating experience of hunting.

It was like having weeds in your field of whatever,

it stymied your endeavours,

whether you were growing wheat or cattle.

Lions would eat the cattle, the leopards would kill the sheep,

zebra and reedbuck and so on would be in the crop flattening it.

And so game was considered vermin in those days and so on the whole,

on the white settlers' land, game was decimated.

It was a way of life, you know, one was brought up

with a rifle in your hand protecting your crops.

Do you remember when you first shot a big animal?

Yes, the first big thing was a Buffalo in our wheat

and I was really quite nervous about it.

And I was only about 13 or 14, I suppose.

And one's little heart was pumping away with excitement

as I got near this terrifying beast.

Anyway, to my delight and surprise, I got it.

What was the feeling after you'd just shot it?

It was a mixture of fear and exhilaration I suppose.

That's the whole point in hunting.

You've got to be... Of the dangerous wildlife,

you've got to have a certain amount of respect,

even if it's not actually fear,

you've got to have a lot of respect for it.

One gets a lot of criticism for having done a lot of hunting

and being a hunter and being passionate about hunting,

but you have to have done it to understand it.

Hunting big game became a central part of the lifestyle of the early white settlers.

It was a sport they loved,

but out here on the African Plains they could take it

on to a much bigger and more exciting scale.

Fox and grouse were chicken feed compared to this.

Hunting in British East Africa was a man's game.

Rituals were established that glorified the triumphant hunter.

He would be photographed with his trophy kill.

Heads and skins were removed and preserved

for him to take home and adorn his walls.

If I'm going to try and understand the appeal and thrill of hunting,

I need to get first-hand experience.

I'm heading north, out of Nairobi towards Lake Naivasha

in the heart of the Great Rift Valley

and it's my first chance to see the magnificent wildlife.

This is absolutely incredible. Look at this.

I'm on my way to meet Gordie Church

who is a modern day professional hunter.

Gordie, I'm Richard.

Lovely to meet you. Welcome to Africa.

Hunting has been banned in Kenya since 1977,

so Gordie spends most of his time working in neighbouring Tanzania,

where he takes paying clients on hunting safaris

tailored to what they want to shoot.

I meet him on his father's 80,000-acre-estate

which operates horseback safaris.

Gordie, assume that I know nothing about what your job is.

What is it that you actually do as a professional hunter?

I guess from the outset when you are selling that hunt,

it's being able to make sure that you select the right trophy.

Making the approach,

that's all the tracking, and getting the wind right,

and making sure that your guest is comfortably in the best position,

and to guide him through the whole process

up to the point that he squeezes the trigger.

So, for people who've never hunted

or find the idea of shooting an animal as a trophy

a bizarre concept, what's the kick of doing it?

I think as a client who's never hunted before,

it's the thrill of being out in the wilderness,

not in a car in the safety of a car, but you're really out on foot

experiencing everything that Africa has to offer

in terms of its wildlife areas.

And there's a certain amount of adrenalin involved

in the actual hunt and in the stalk.

But its sort of more than that,

it's the adventure that comes with it.

Gordie offers to take me riding to see some

of his father's land and game.

Being out in the vast wilderness, I begin to understand the enormous

sense of freedom that the world of safari offers.

To experience the thrill of the hunt,

but without the kill, Gordie invites me to go tracking,

to see if we can get close enough to some game,

within shooting distance.

-We've got a herd of Thompson's gazelle down the bottom there.

-OK.

They're feeding quite nicely out in the open.

And the wind's in our favour.

So we'll just quietly creep our way down here.

Once we get within range raise the rifle

-and squeeze that shot off.

-OK.

We need to be quiet because they're quite crafty,

little creatures

so if they get our wind or if they see any kind of movement they will take off.

When we're close enough,

Gordie hands me the gun which he reassures me is unloaded.

OK, bolts open.

No ammo.

So what you want to do is, you want to pull that

tight into your cheek.

Grip that nicely and lean slightly forward into the shot.

Keep those legs spread.

Now, put that bead so that it's right in the bottom of that feed.

Holding the rifle and looking down the sights sets your pulse racing,

the sense of power is thrilling and electric.

I still don't think I could do it.

Maybe. I don't know.

Have you ever had people who have lost their nerve?

Yeah.

I've had...

It's a common thing called buck fever

when someone gets so excited that they start to shake.

But it's just a question of getting them to calm down

and think about it,

and the thing is you don't have to take the shot.

That's not the point.

The point is exploring this beautiful area and coming to this point.

We have many clients who get to that point

and think, "Yeah, it's too beautiful, I'm not going to take the shot."

You never have to take the shot.

Just even doing that, there's no question

that it's like being in The Secret Seven or The Famous Five.

The adrenalin rush that you feel that...

I don't know. Your...

Your DNA of hunting from God knows when kicks in,

but it's... If I could shoot and know that I'm not killing the animal

and could hold it up and then trot it off an hour later.

I'd do it like a shot!

It's very exciting!

Stalking and tracking with Gordie

has catapulted me back to my childhood.

I was just hit by an incredible nostalgia

because last time I did this I was hunting with my father

when I was a boy in Swaziland when he would shoot impala.

There was always this overwhelming regret that I felt

that you would be sitting on the back of a pick up truck

with the dead animal that was still warm

and wishing that it could come back to life.

Even without bullets, there's no doubt tracking and hunting game

has a buzz that's unique

and difficult to understand unless you try it.

Gordie had converted me into a hunter

albeit of the non-killing variety.

By the early 1900s, the settlers had realised they were onto a good thing

and that perhaps they could sell the experience and adventure

of big game hunting worldwide to paying clients.

An infrastructure for commercial hunting took shape in British East Africa

as wealthy tourists started to flock there.

To cater for the growing demand special safari outfitting companies

began to spring up in the rapidly growing town of Nairobi.

I headed to the National Archives where catalogues

of old newspapers are kept from the early settler days.

I wanted to look for adverts from the original outfitting firms

and met up with Professor Anderson again, who agreed to help me.

This is the East African Standard,

one of the first newspapers in the colony.

And here we have on the Standard for 1906

typical adverts that relate to the safari trade,

hunting and all the things that go with it.

And these are companies that outfit safaris.

So I could go and get kitted out here?

You could go and buy a safari chair and a tent

and camping equipment from Smith Mackenzie and Co.

-Excellent.

-There's another one describing themselves as

Colonial Stores Mombasa and Nairobi selling wholesale and retail.

Including Callum's Perfection Whiskey,

Ferguson's paints and oils, wines and spirits, green rot proof tents.

They're all huge, grand tents from 1903 with verandas with porches.

These are statements of status, class, importance

and, my goodness, no African sets foot in those tents.

So, embedded in the safari story, in its very material culture

is a history of separation and difference and distance.

Entitlement, luxury.

So, it would be the equivalent of the Times of London

having a huge advert for Harrods saying...

-Come here, we'll fix you.

-It's pretty sophisticated for 1906 and a tent.

It's a one stop shop.

So, this was an enormous business.

Huge business and these companies would put you in touch

with labour recruiters, who would also arrange for your porters

and transportation, food supplies, everything you needed.

They would sell you your equipment,

but they would also fix your trip for you.

As these companies grew, there would be one major client who would take the idea

of big game hunting, combined with extraordinary luxury

and transform it into a pursuit renowned the world over.

The recently retired President of the Untied States,

Theodore Roosevelt.

The President arrived in East Africa

at the end of his second term in office and he trailblazed into town,

accompanied by his 19-year-old-son Kermit and a vast entourage.

Roosevelt chose the hunting outfitters Newland & Tarlton to kit out his safari.

The company also provided him with the first generation

of newly founded professional hunting guides,

R J Cunninghame and Philip Percival.

These men were experienced hunters who would lead the elder statesmen

through the dangerous bush in search of his trophies.

The former president's arrival was a huge coup

for the burgeoning British ex pat community

and they were keen to play host to him while he hunted.

Roosevelt began his safari on land owned by Lord and Lady Pease

who were still building their home when the party arrived.

In the pastures close to the Pease family home on the Kapiti Plains,

I met Don Young, the current owner of the Newland & Tarlton safari farm.

What are you recreating here today?

We've taken a photograph from Roosevelt's safari

of Roosevelt's personal sleeping tent that he had set up when he arrived.

So we're going to put up the Roosevelt tent

and kit it out the way Roosevelt had it done back in 1909.

And on what scale was this safari undertaken?

-How many people did it involve?

-It was huge.

When he arrived at the Kapiti Station

there were 250 people waiting for him

with 20 armed soldiers to escort him.

And they all shouted out, "Greetings to the king Of America!

"Greetings to the king of America",

and they were all in their perfect Newland & Tarlton uniforms

and it was a small army, actually.

So, out of those 250 people that were lined up at the station

what was the division of what they each did?

Roosevelt himself had six assistants

and they stayed with him throughout the trip

until they got to the Sudan where they switched all the porters over.

By then there were 500 porters.

By modern US dollars standards, this was a one million dollar safari.

This was the biggest thing that ever happened to Kenya

and it literally put Kenya in the consciousness

of millions and millions of people

that would otherwise think of Africa only as the dark continent.

If you want to help the guys, let's both grab a line

and we'll stretch these out and hammer in the steaks.

OK. I'll get a mallet.

Despite being out in the African bush,

Roosevelt refused to lower his living standards

and set the style for luxury on safari.

His tent was fitted out just like home,

he even bought his own writing bureau

and leather bound book collection.

So, this was done every night.

How long did this safari go on for?

It went on for a year.

Roosevelt, of course, dined extremely well on safari,

eating the fresh game meat that was killed daily and cooked on an open fire.

How do you like your lamb, Richard?

-Charred.

-Charred. We can do charred.

He encouraged his entourage to dress up for dinner

and to enjoy fine wines and malt whiskies.

Richard, we've set a table as if this was Teddy Roosevelt on safari

at dinner, so you've done a great job baking some bread

and you've grilled some meat which we'll have in a minute.

I've also set things out like Roosevelt wrote...

Binoculars were invented during Roosevelt's lifetime

so these would have been quite new technology.

He went round and was given a pair

-so this is the Roosevelt-era pair of binoculars.

-Oh, right.

And really exciting, we have a lovely photograph of Roosevelt standing

with the latest Eastman Kodak Camera and we actually

managed to find in Nairobi the exact edition that

Roosevelt was carrying with him on safari

-and this is just to give you an idea how...

-This is a Kodak?

This is an Eastman Kodak, all the pictures of Roosevelt on safari

were taken on cameras like this.

You could actually adjust this for depth of field and frame your picture

by moving the bellows back and forth.

By which time you could be gored by a rhinoceros.

By which time you would be run over by a rhino.

Although it sounds contradictory,

Teddy Roosevelt was both an avid hunter and devoted conservationist.

He brought with him a vast team of scientists

and justified his year-long-hunt by proclaiming he was shooting

as many animals as possible in the name of natural history

and transporting his trophies back as specimens

to adorn the museums of New York.

Among his team of scientists was Carl Akeley,

a hunter, inventor and sculptor who revolutionised taxidermy

by creating giant dioramas, reconstructed scenes

from the African bush with plants and real stuffed animals.

Akeley and Roosevelt's scientific endeavours,

attracted worldwide interest and expectation.

Don't forgot, there was our big safari,

the Newland & Tarlton safari, 250 porters,

following them like a little shadow universe, parallel universe,

were reporters from all over the world.

There was an entire safari that followed him around

and every time he allowed them, they came in and took his pictures,

he had his own private photographer called Heller

so most of the images we have were shot by him.

But this is a media circus.

If they were moving this great phalanx of an army through the bush,

how did they not frighten every bit of game off?

There's your point, they had to put the camp aside

and then they would ride out for an hour or two into the game country.

This is virtually what's called a naive wildlife population,

they'd hardly seen other humans or hardly been hunted,

so the game was so thick.

And if you read Roosevelt,

the biggest problem with the hunt was Roosevelt himself.

He was blind in one eye, typical Roosevelt,

he'd been boxing in the White House.

He'd been punched in the eye by one of his mates

and haemorrhaged and he went blind. But he wouldn't let anyone know this.

-So how good a shot was he?

-Lousy.

-Lousy shot.

-So it was a case of he took a big old blast

and somebody else had to go and...

Lesley Tarlton. As hunters do today,

the professional hunters today stand right off the shoulder.

-So it's like an actor with a stuntman.

-Absolutely.

While Teddy Roosevelt may have been a poor shot,

during his year-long-safari he personally bagged 216 animals

and the sum total killed or trapped by his party

totalled a staggering 11,788 animals, all in the name of science.

By the time Roosevelt's epic safari was over

newspapers and newsreels around the world

had championed his landmark achievements.

When he returned to the US, Roosevelt wrote his seminal book

African Game Trails, which glorified his safari

and set an impossible precedent inspiring many other American's

to emulate his frontier adventures.

Wannabe cowboys like Buffalo Jones turned up

in British East Africa and attempted to tame the wild game

using wild west methods on the African Plains.

The frontier spirit was in the American blood and they loved it.

Within a few years of its beginnings as a simple rail depot,

Nairobi had been transformed into a westernised town,

the hub of a burgeoning safari industry

and home to an expanding community of British ex pats

who were growing rich on its profits.

Society developed a British way of life.

The newly founded Turf Club held weekly race meetings

and polo matches and families entertained with luncheons,

picnics and garden parties.

Emerging from the First World War, the British government set about

encouraging more gentry to emigrate

to support the push for colonisation.

Their masterstroke of recruitment took place here

at the then Theatre Royal, in the heart of Nairobi

where they advertised plots of land up for grabs.

The protectorate was offering a new way of life

that safari encapsulated,

freedom, luxury, power, danger and excitement.

A land free from the restrictions of life back home.

At the end of the First World War, 1918,

the British East African government renewed their attempts

to lure more wealthy Brits to come and settle permanently in Kenya.

So in a piece of spectacular showmanship

they invited everyone to a national lottery draw,

parcels of land were handed out at knock down prices.

They anticipated a few hundred people at best,

but they were swamped by over 2,000.

It was absolute mayhem in here.

Chaotic! It was like a tombola roll up, roll up!

£200 for this piece over here!

£100 pounds over there.

Blah, blah, blah.

HE JABBERS

It was absolutely jammed right here

in what was formally the Theatre Royal Nairobi

and which today, ironically, is divided up

into a church service down below and the Cameo Cinema up here,

which until very recently showed films

of a rather, shall we say, vibrant nature!

It's an extraordinary thing that you could have the presumption

that you could come from another country

in the northern hemisphere and arrive here, open plains,

open land and think, "Well, there's nobody living on it that we can see.

"We'll have it and we'll build a theatre here and call it the Theatre Royal, Nairobi."

Bonkers!

The marketing campaign paid off.

In 1920, British East Africa became a fully-fledged colony and was renamed Kenya.

Safari was entering its boom years, as hoards of wealthy tourists

flocked to the freedom and thrills that Africa offered.

To get a taste of the luxury that 1920s safari now offered,

I headed south-west from Nairobi and into the Masai Mara.

The Mara is breathtaking.

Acacia trees are scattered across the vast plains and big game animals roam freely.

Driving though it is awe-inspiring.

TRUMPETING

(There's a baby.)

(Spectacular. Jambo, jambo, Kenya.)

What's so jaw-dropping about this landscape is that

the Kruger National Park in South Africa feels almost suburban

in comparison in the sheer scale of what there is all around you here.

That's the thing I was completely unprepared for.

I'm en route to find the Cottar's 1920s Safari Camp.

'American-born Charles Cottar was the first in the family line to head out to Kenya to settle in 1910.

'Cottar soon earned a reputation as a fearless hunter and brought danger and excitement to safari.

'He also tapped into the growing American market

'as safari became an elitist pastime for the super rich.

'Cottar's Safari Service first opened for business in 1919

'and the latest in the family to take over the helm is Calvin Cottar, Charles' great-grandson.'

Thanks, James. Asante.

-Hi, Calvin.

-Richard, how are you?

-Welcome to camp.

-Ah, thank you.

CALVIN MAKES THE INTRODUCTIONS

-So you're fourth generation?

-I am fourth generation.

-Welcome to camp.

-Thank you.

-So this is an Edwardian drawing room, under canvas in the middle of the Mara.

-Yes.

And this created that elegance that you see in films and the whole mystique about safari,

it comes from that period of time, especially in the '20s when it was very much a luxury item to do.

And they played on that, my family and people in that business made their camps as unique as possible.

I'll show you some family heirlooms.

Here's my grandfather's hat, his original hat,

and a lot of original books from that era.

This gun was used for shooting a very big buffalo in, I think, '56.

-Is that why it's got this buffalo on here?

-Exactly.

-Does it still work?

-Oh, very much so. Oh, yeah.

It looks to me like walking into Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in Out of Africa.

-Is that what people say when they arrive here?

-Yes. That's what we want them to feel.

Who were the hunting and safari clients who were attracted to come here then?

It was mostly American commercial families or railroad families.

-They were the ones that had the big money.

-Money enough.

-Yeah. Big money.

Cottar's safari boomed in the 1920s and '30s.

Charles had three sons - Bud, Mike and Ted - who were all big game hunters.

But as with Roosevelt's original safari, the Cottar safari wasn't just about killing.

Together the brothers pioneered the genre of natural history film-making at considerable risk to themselves

by skilfully luring wild animals close up to the cameras.

And it was Charles' thirst for danger that would prove fatal.

In 1940, he was gored by a charging rhinoceros and died aged 67.

His sons vowed to carry on the family's safari tradition.

RUMBLE OF THUNDER

Do you feel the spirit of all these men in you and here?

Right here, yeah, because, OK, my great-grandfather was killed by a rhino

five kilometres over there.

My father was hit by buffalo and very nearly killed

three kilometres over there and my formative years was all here.

My first hunting experience was here.

It's a magical place and I've come back to my roots which is here.

THUNDER CRASHES

-The gods are talking to us.

-They are.

Full-on rain!

Pure organic water.

Oh, it's beautiful!

The Cottars were also innovators in the use of early motorised vehicles for safari.

Charles ordered four American Ford chassis and parts to be shipped to Mombasa.

The vehicles were assembled by his three sons and within a year,

they'd replaced the traditional use of porters, ox carts and donkeys.

To keep this tradition alive, Calvin has maintained a '20s style vehicle

and he took me out into the Mara to get a flavour of that bygone era.

Let's see if we can cross this stream up here.

What happens if we get stuck?

Well, I've got you to push.

This is it. This is it, Calvin!

Buffalo!

Oh, there's herds of them.

-They're all around us.

-Yeah, yeah.

Oh, Calvin, they're everywhere, they're everywhere, everywhere.

There must be 600 of them or more.

'It's awe-inspiring to be surrounded by these dangerous and unpredictable wild animals.'

Calvin's taking us in.

Might be Custer's last stand!

How aggressive are they?

They can be quite aggressive.

As long as they're on your side of the car, I'm not worried.

-Extraordinary.

-That's a big buffalo. See that buffalo there?

-Yeah.

If you were on the third last day of a buffalo hunt and you hadn't succeeded in getting a big one,

he would be very, very huntable, this one.

You know, the the Holy Grail is 50 inches between the curves,

one outer end of the horn to the other outer end of the curve is probably about 44-45 inches.

STARTS ENGINE

Look at all of them run.

HOOVES POUND

God, the sound of it!

Seeing such impressive big game close up was the perfect end to the day at Cottar's Camp.

And although we weren't hunting as they would have done back in the 1920s,

I was beginning to get seduced by the heady luxury of it all.

-Good afternoon.

-Oh, jambo, Francis.

-Jambo.

-Cheers.

ICE CLINKS

It's incredible to imagine that in the 1920s people would have come on safari

and trekked into the middle of nowhere in the Masai Mara

with all this luxury tenting and equipment and baths available,

but I tell you, I can imagine that after a day of hunting and safari,

this is the way to go.

Chin chin!

Oh, this is the life.

Colonial settlers became giddy with the freedom of their African lifestyle -

safari being the natural extension of this.

But the burgeoning colony would soon gain the reputation as a wayward society.

Free from the strictures of British rules and regulations, a minority became uncontrollable.

Boozy romps and sexual shenanigans were rife, and the infamous Muthaiga Club was the hub,

so much so that no cameras have ever been allowed inside

and filming is not permitted in the grounds to this day.

Colonial stalwarts declared that a small minority were tarnishing the colony's reputation,

but the clique, nicknamed the Happy Valley set, carried on regardless.

And this free and easy loosening of morals became an integral part of safari.

The macho sport had undoubted sex appeal

which lured women and a new breed of seducer hunters emerged, promising romance in the wilds of Africa.

One of the most famous was Baron Bror von Blixen.

Blixen was a Swedish aristocrat brought up in the hunting tradition

and was portrayed in the Hollywood epic Out of Africa, in 1985,

as the adulterous husband of Karen Blixen.

Throughout the '20s and '30s, Bror had a string of wealthy clients

queuing up to pay for his services and his reputation as a prolific lover became legend.

But what was it that Bror had that made him so adored?

'I met his godson, Ulf Ashcan, to find out.'

-Ulf, can you show me a photograph of Bror?

-I can indeed.

This is not typical of Bror at all

because very seldom did you see him dressed up in a suit and a tie.

But this is a more typical picture and he wasn't one of these guys who had bullet belts.

-No macho posturing?

-Nothing! He just carried a gun and a few bullets in his pocket and that was it.

So considering that he wasn't conventionally handsome,

-he was a legendary ladies man.

-Yes! That's right!

And one of the secrets was that if he met a lady,

his concentration was so total

that that woman or girl thought that she was the only woman on earth.

He never wavered, I mean, he never took his eyes off the particular person that he was speaking to.

He just looked them in the eye and talked to them, and he listened.

He was a very good listener.

That was his secret.

For the women lucky enough to be on a Bror Blixen safari, nothing was too much trouble.

He would cater to their every whim.

If we go back to this particular safari, which they had two aircrafts on standby

because once a week the matriarch demanded to be flown to Nairobi once a week to have her hair done.

Hair done for the hunt? I love that!

And not only that, the plane then came back fully laden with Evian water for her bathtub.

-Beryl Markham said that when he died, he broke the mould.

-Yes.

I think she was right.

And they were lovers as well, were they?

I think definitely yes... in a friendly way.

-So beds and hunting and safari were all shared in a very fluid, open way?

-Absolutely, yeah.

-And no jealously, which was the best of all.

-Are you like that?

Er, I probably was.

-Now no more?

-No.

Bror Blixen became the highest-paid professional hunter of his generation.

He formed a professional partnership with fellow hunter Denys Finch Hatton,

another legendary womaniser famous for his love affair with Karen Blixen.

Blixen and Finch Hatton combined to become safari's first generation of heart-throb hunters.

The thing that comes across most about Bror Blixen for me

is that he was a man's man that people wanted to befriend and to emulate

and was also irresistible to women.

So the best of both worlds.

Lucky bastard.

By the late 1930s, safari was attracting hordes of wealthy European and American clients,

but the promise of passion and romance under the African stars couldn't last forever.

Back in Nairobi, affairs became widespread.

In fact, one story revealed that jealousies could boil over with fatal consequences.

In 1941, a high society murder scandalised the colony and became national news back home in Britain.

Lord Joss Hay, the Earl of Erroll, was murdered on the outskirts of Nairobi,

in a torrid story that would inspire the feature film White Mischief.

Now we're going to go on a sort of murder mystery tour here

of where these events took place. What happened was this...

Sir Jock Delves Brougton, who was about 55, married a great beauty called Diana Caldwell

and they had been married for only two months, barely off the boat from Mombasa

and the Casanova of Kenya, also known as Lord Joss Hay, the Earl of Erroll,

who had bonked and bedded and cuckolded most of the husbands around here

fell madly in love with Diana.

And this is where it really gets going.

Lord Erroll had a flagrant affair with Diana

and it soon became hot gossip on the terraces of the Muthaiga Club.

But six weeks after the affair began,

Erroll was found dead in his car in the early hours of the morning on the 25th January 1941.

He had been shot at point blank range.

Jock Broughton was arrested on suspicion of murder but was found "not guilty".

However, unable to reconcile with Diana, he returned to England,

where two years later he committed suicide by overdose.

It remains an unsolved mystery

and it was this murder in the middle of the Second World War

that brought notoriety and infamy to a very tiny minority

of the aristocratic white settlers here in Kenya.

The horrors of the Second World War erased all prospects of going on safari,

and the once lucrative trade from Europe and America evaporated.

Once the Allies were victorious,

the colonists set about rebuilding their most famous industry

and the catalyst once again came from America,

this time from the pen of the famous writer Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway went on safari in Kenya in 1934 and again in 1953.

In a series of novels, he described safari with manly mastery,

transforming the great white hunter into the role of hero.

He described a world of glamour, danger and sex

that was inevitably snapped up by Hollywood and it was show time!

A stream of romantic movies followed, glamorising safari,

like Mogambo starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly

and King Solomon's Mines starring Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr.

Hollywood portrayed white hunters as protectors, killers and womanisers, yet at one with nature.

The women in the movies trembled at the hunter's machismo

and were drawn irresistibly into their beds.

The movies had huge appeal to audiences worldwide

prompting a tourist boom in pursuit of the Hollywood dream.

Hollywood undoubtedly reignited the allure of safari in the early '50s -

tourists flocked to Kenya,

still known as British East Africa, in search of romance and adventure and trying to bag the Big five.

As the demand for hunting grew rapidly, so did the demand for a new generation of professional hunters

to guide and protect people going through the dangerous bush.

I'm now heading north to the foothills of Mount Kenya

to meet one of the last professional hunters from that era still alive to tell us his tale.

Great white hunters are unusually guarded about recounting their hunting days,

but we contacted Mike Prettejohn, a hunter from my father's generation who agreed to meet.

'Mike was considered one of the most fearless hunters of his era,

'but unbeknownst to anyone, his generation would be the last.'

Mike, Richard.

Nice to meet you. Come along in.

Thank you very much.

Mike, when did you become a professional hunter?

I became actually a professional hunter in 1957.

And I was brought up amongst wildlife

and so I hunted ever since I was a boy of six, basically.

And how close to death did you ever come?

What adventures did you come up against?

I was thrown by a rhino once.

I was knocked down by a buffalo and had...the bullet shot through the buffalo,

it went right the way through the buffalo out of its neck,

I had my feet around its neck and it knelt down and was pushing me along the ground.

My gun bearer actually shot it through the backside,

it went all the way through out by the neck into the back of my leg.

And I never realised I had so many holes,

I had a lot of problems with this leg because the bullet moved up

and a year later a doctor took it out from up top here.

-You had a bullet in your bum and you didn't know it was there?

-I didn't know it was there.

I've heard of tough, but that's really tough! God!

But one close call with death made Mike a legend in the hunting community,

when he was asked to help shoot a rogue lion that was killing local cattle.

One of our pet bulls had been taken out

and so I went and I didn't have my own rifle with me

and I borrowed a rifle and it was old ammunition

and although it hit the lion pretty severely, it didn't kill it straightaway.

It was just lying under a bush and I could see its stomach was just going up and down,

so I realised it was alive.

And so I walked around to try and get a shot of its side,

but it obviously heard me coming and it suddenly just whipped out

and I remember it coming towards me with its tail driving it like the propeller of an aeroplane.

And I put out my hand to stop it

and I fell over, it came down on top of me

and I put my leg up and it grabbed my leg in its jaws.

As Mike wrestled with the lion, his unarmed companion took a photograph,

hoping that the flash would scare it away.

He hadn't got a gun or anything so the best defence

was to take another picture and the flash...

obviously I think the lion thought another bullet was coming so he jumped off.

So flash photography saved your life?

I would say the flash photography saved my life, yes.

When you describe it, it sounds as though it's so vivid,

it sounds as though it could have happened yesterday, and how old are you now?

-77.

-How old do you feel?

45.

So when you talk about this, does it seem as though it was very recent?

Yes, it does, it seems like yesterday really.

What I find personally extraordinary is that many of these...

elder statesman of safari and hunting that I've met here

are the age that my father, if he'd have lived, would have been,

because he was dead at 52 so there's, um...

..a great, I suppose, feeling of nostalgia for me of what I could have had,

so...it's a bit embarrassing, but I feel that loss in speaking to them.

So it's almost like finding, er... proxy fathers along the journey.

You get a sense that somebody who has lived in another era

although you're still in the present but what they're talking about

and their sensibility and their code of honour, if you like,

is absolutely present in who they are now.

So very nostalgic for me.

You got me there, bloody hell.

The '50s and '60s, while full of adventure for professional hunters,

marked the beginning of the end for hunting in Kenya.

By now, the landscape had radically changed.

The once open lands, teeming with wildlife that early settlers had been tempted by,

were depleted and parcelled up for development.

The population was rapidly expanding,

there were greater demands for farmland and hunting was spiralling out of control.

The growing African population who had little option for buying land for farming

were forced to turn to poaching from private land and National Parks,

either for food or for ivory to sell.

As a result, they killed vast numbers of animals indiscriminately.

Meanwhile, conflicts over land rights resulted in the Mau Mau uprising,

as the colonialists and Kenyans were locked in fierce battles,

resulting in 100 settlers and 10,000 Africans being killed.

The war culminated in the end of British rule and on 1st June 1963, Kenya was declared independent.

This is one of the happiest days of my life.

'But the new African government failed to get a grip on poaching and the situation escalated.

'Peter Mwangi was a poacher in that era.

'Decades later he is a gamekeeper and patrols the Aberdare Forest to conserve the animal population.'

Peter, this is enormous, what animal is this for?

This is for trapping buffalo.

If the animal comes across to put inside like that, it is caught like that.

-So this is guaranteed to kill the animal.

-Yeah. Argh!

Peter, can you explain what this monster is?

Those are bad elephant traps.

They are put down and covered by soil so the elephant cannot see it.

When it is starting to move there,

-it is...inside their legs.

-So it's injured...

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Inside here. After moving, maybe two to three days, it's defeated how to move.

Start lying, no food and it is dead.

So then poachers can come and get it?

-Tusks.

-Tusks.

-Yeah.

Peter, when you were a poacher, what weapons did you use?

Well, when I was a poacher I was using spears and spear it.

And would it die instantly?

-There and there.

-What, through the neck?

No, no, through the heart.

I did very bad work and knowingly.

So when did that change, when you became a conservationist?

Um...it came, that time there were professional people, professional hunters.

They came to my place, they asked if there was someone who could show them the bush to hunt

so I was appointed to take them out by somebody.

When I took them out into the forest, I was given five shillings per day,

five shillings for one day and we killed one bongo on licence,

professional licensing, I realised those animals can give you money.

I started to live slowly by slowly to stop that work of poaching.

While Peter Mwengi and Mike Prettejohn were once hunters in the same era

but from separate cultures, today they work together

for the conservation of the Aberdare Forests.

But their relationship is a minority in the history of safari.

By the late 1960s, poaching had continued to rise and National Parks like Tsavo

lost 35,000 elephants and 5,000 rhinoceros.

As the wildlife population continued to plummet across Kenya,

a growing conservation movement was making any form of hunting ever more unacceptable.

Finally the Kenyan Government decided to impose a ban on all forms of hunting in 1977,

in an attempt to conserve the wildlife that remained.

Despite the ban, safari continued to expand, reinventing itself along the way.

Cheap air travel meant ever more tourists could fly into Nairobi for the safari experience,

with the gun being replaced by the camera.

By the '70s and '80s, photo safaris became a mass market.

But the history of safari proves that there are always people willing to pay to shoot wild animals.

And safari hunters spread to Tanzania, Somalia, Uganda,

Botswana and South Africa where it is still legal.

Morning.

'North of Johannesburg in South Africa, is the Melorani Ranch owned by Stewart Dorrington.

'Stewart's hunting operation allows him to plough the profits he makes from clients

'back into breeding new stock.

'He agreed to let me follow a hunt with his friend Peter Flack.

'Stewart and Peter are hoping to find an older animal,

'past breeding age that would either die of natural causes soon or be culled.'

We're looking for an impala or a wildebeest so then we just want to make sure

that it's not a young animal, it's still going to be breeding, that it's an older bull

and it's still a nice animal if you want to put him on the wall.

Sometimes you will see exactly what you are looking for

and then you'll drive past, out of ear shot and out of sight and then put in a stalk.

Shall I walk in single file?

-(Yes, if you can walk behind Peter.)

-Behind Peter, OK.

(I'll just walk in front here.)

(The breeze is good, it's straight into us.)

'After only ten minutes of tracking, Stewart thinks he has spotted the perfect animal.'

(There's a wildebeest here.)

That was quick.

That was a lovely bull.

Yeah, that was a nice bull.

-I just went behind his leg.

-I could see the blood, the lung blood,

so he obviously hit... it went right through the vitals.

And we can still hear him going around?

He's down and it's just the nerves kicking.

There he is.

-So what is that movement now, nerves or...

-Just nerves.

-Pure nerves.

That's what I thought was going on down there. Sometimes with their last...

That's amazed me that he was still going. They are tough things these wildebeest.

It's the toughest animal pound for pound, I think, on the African continent.

If they were as big as buffalos, people would hunt them in armoured cars.

'Peter's adrenalin was clearly pumping

'and it reminds of tracking with Gordie Church and how emotionally charged I felt back then.'

Taking him off has no impact on the population really because he's not a breeding bull.

-What happens next?

-Well, we normally clean him up

and take a couple of photos.

'Stewart prices the animals he offers for hunting according to their breed.

'Shooting the wildebeest cost 825 US dollars,

'while the most expensive animal he offers is the sable antelope

'costing 9,750 US dollars.

'Safari hunting in South Africa is booming, with clients like Peter ready to pay for the privilege.

'Although it sounds like a huge contradiction,

'Stewart is convinced that paid hunting can play a vital role in helping the animal population grow

'and there's no doubt he loves both his land and the wildlife that roams it.'

Can I ask you about this farm here or ranch?

It's where your mother and her father lived and it's now been converted

-from a traditional farm back to the land as it would have been before anybody farmed here.

-That's right.

And that's because the value of game supersedes livestock.

Yah, exactly, the economics basically dictates the land use at the end of the day

and I have no problem with that with game because I love wildlife

and it's always been my dream to turn this into a reserve and a domain for wild animals.

From the hunting we managed to invest the proceeds into rare species,

so not only have we brought back the species that used to be fairly common here,

we've brought back species like the white rhino

and the sable antelope, and it's causing this huge population explosion.

So Stewart are you saying that - it sounds like a contradiction in terms -

that you have hunting but because it's controlled and licensed

that increases the amount of game that there is.

Absolutely. It's totally true that way

and it incentivises when you are then looking after your own game.

You're not going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, you want to have another goose

so you look after your game better than probably many of the National Parks are being looked after

because you want them to be fruitful and multiply.

When Stewart took over Melorani, 26 years ago,

the wildlife on his land consisted of only a handful of kudu and warthog,

but today he has over 2,500 head of game.

Even though hunting safaris are in a minority in Africa,

Stewart's operation has shown me

that hunting might still have an important role to play in conservation.

But what about Kenya -

the historical home of safari,

where the hunting ban still remains?

Oh, last night we had a four-hour higgledy-piggledy drive down a track

like I've never been in anything like in my life,

from the foothills of Mount Kenya to this camp Il N'gwesi.

And I've just woken up now like Lazarus.

This is the Garden of Eden.

Spectacular!

Hunting or not, safari has always been about the sheer power and glory of the African landscape.

This is Il N'gwesi and I hope that lodges like this signal the future of safari in Africa.

Il N'gwesi is run by the local Masai community.

The idea for the lodge came from local white settlers who helped generate the funding to build it,

but the Masai have been involved from the start

and were responsible for the lodge's unique eco-friendly construction.

'The current Lodge Manager is Ochene Sakita Mayiani.'

So this is the first Masai run and owned safari in Kenya?

Yes, indeed. This is the first Masai owned and managed safari in Kenya.

And when the first guests arrived here,

was that a shock when people actually arrived?

Oh, oh, I can tell you it was a shock because we did not understand how to handle,

until the first time we'd seen tourists.

So for us at that time it was difficult, because these were different people,

the colour, the pink colour, it was difficult for us even to shake hands.

I tell you, we wanted them to keep their distance.

So you're saying that when you first met the pink people, you had to keep them at a distance.

How long did it take to learn or adopt a Western style of business to run the safari camp?

It took us quite some time, more than one year to slowly understand.

-And are you making money?

-Yeah. We are making money now, yeah.

-And what happens to it?

-The revenue that we generate from this one

is again ploughed back in the community

to support the various produce and programmes we have in the community.

These are water, education, that is schools and bursaries for the school children,

it goes to assist in conserving the eco system, yeah.

Il N'gwesi has been the inspiration behind ten other African-run safari lodges

that have been set up across Kenya over the past decade.

Whilst still in the minority, Il N'gwesi feels like the way forward

to experience a truly integrated African safari, free of any colonial echoes.

It's 6.30am here on the Mara and we're about to go up in a balloon ride.

I have no idea which direction we're going in,

what the wind will be like or where we are going to land.

My journey through safari was coming to an end and it would finish in a truly magical way.

For all the bloodshed and colonial exploitation,

I have discovered the emotional heart of Africa still beats on.

I'm back in the Masai Mara, this time with guide Toby Fenwick Wilson.

Toby represents the new breed of British settlers

who cater for the super wealthy on safari in Kenya once again...

..and he's taking me on the trip of a lifetime.

For me this is the elemental Africa,

wildlife below us and unspoilt wilderness.

This is the perfect, perfect time

because the night shift is essentially changing with the day shift.

So these are the first grumbles of activity.

Anything that I say, any words are going to be chicken pellets compared to what you see here, you can't...

no word can take in what this is.

Look! There's a leopard!

There's a leopard!

There's a leopard going through!

Wow! That's wonderful.

Good, I've never seen that... that's...

Hippos down there.

They've literally just come back, they'll have been out grazing, they'll have just pottered back in.

We're going right over it.

That instant adrenalin sort of pow!

that you get, like being a five-year-old.

This is the closest I'll ever get to feeling like a bird or Sinbad on a magic carpet ride.

-A wild dog, no, a hyena.

-A hyena.

-A hyena!

Floating over the Mara conjures up the hypnotic spirit of freedom

those early settlers must have experienced over a century ago.

Leopard, elephant, giraffe, baby giraffe, baby hippo...

gobsmacked human!

-Jambo.

-Jambo.

'After recovering from a breathtaking flight,

'Toby treats me to a champagne breakfast in the bush.'

POP! There we go. Whoops!

'Toby's clients are the top end of safari today.'

The biggest kick for me was seeing that leopard.

'They come from all around the world and include film stars, IT moguls, and bigwigs from Wall St,

'who all crave the freedom of safari.'

A lot of these people are cash rich, time poor.

And they're coming out here to actually have a bit of space,

slough off that chaos of the busy lives they're leading.

I mean, you get these great mandarins that are coming in from Wall St or wherever it is...

They are out of their comfort zone and in the hands of some lunatic guide,

already they are slightly on the back foot, that would be slightly nerve-racking.

But you can see them, they're slightly twitching, "Where's my telephone?" and all that stuff.

And by day two or three the nervousness has gone, the twitching's gone,

the Blackberries are out, the face is relaxed, ten years younger.

And my whole ambition in a safari is to get someone in this context

and have the ability to think, repolarise,

enjoy the animals.

You're trying to allow them into your head and give them an opportunity

to see why you're so passionate about this lifestyle and that is what I am trying to tune people in to.

You understand it, it's in your blood, it's in my blood,

but if I can in some way

instil even a percentage of that unknown inner feeling,

then I've done a good job and I'm happy.

'After a journey through the history of safari, I wasn't ready to leave Kenya yet.

'I still had one last animal I wanted too see.

'Lion are the royalty of the African plains and Toby heard on the bush telegraph

'that a pride had been spotted on a nearby hillside.

'Seeing them close up would complete my own personal Big Five.'

-Yeah, yeah, there they are, directly ahead do you see sitting on the...?

-Yep.

It looks like three of them but I may be completely wrong.

They are there, aren't they?

Old Swazi boy eyes.

Oh, my God! One, two, three, four, five, six...

..seven. There are seven here.

Oh, a youngster, look.

I was just thinking, Richard, it's one thing seeing lions

but in this geographic context it just couldn't be more perfect, could it?

-It couldn't.

-It's sublime.

Like generations of settlers before him,

there is no doubting Toby's genuine love for Africa and its wildlife

and I know that once it's in your blood, it never lets you go.

Oh, there's another...

Eight all together.

Yeah, it's on the move.

'Safari is still a story of white settlers in Kenya,

'but the search for freedom that inspired so many to come here in the first place,

'is what attracts over a million tourists to visit every year.

'I hope it's a freedom that carries on inspiring and feeding the human soul into the future.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd