HOLIDAY brochures, all glossy and expensive, are falling through my letter box every day. It’s a cold time of year when we draw the curtains, turn on the fire and dream of our summer holiday. But don’t fall into the trap.

Travel companies have the overview and know exactly how many holidays they are likely to sell each week. When the demand peaks so does the price, but if you are “time rich and money poor” you can beat the system, enjoy a quiet holiday away from the crowds and sample the haute cuisine of the best chefs.

Right now, pre-Christmas, is the worst time for the holiday sellers. We the buyers are all busy getting ready for The Big Day and no one likes to miss out on the Christmas parties. Nobody is going on holiday. Demand drops and so do the prices if you book in December and return before Christmas.

If you stay away over the Christmas holidays the price soars and goes from the bottom to the top. But for a bargain basement price you can live high on the hog because in the pre-Christmas time the hotels hire the top chefs who are practising their skills and producing the best meals.

One year in this “December window of opportunity” I came across a little nugget – ‘Go on a pre-Christmas safari to Mombassa. Your 10-hour flight plus two weeks in a Four Star Hotel plus half board for just £249.’ After calculating how much I would save on car expenses, food, gas, electricity and the cough medicine to fight my winter cold during those two weeks if I stayed in Oxford, I discovered the holiday would really cost me only £79. A trip to Glasgow on British Rail would be much more expensive.

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So I went on my first safari in the game reserves of Kenya. It was a refreshing change in the way humans and animals normally related. Groups of 10 people were packed tightly and securely in cages on wheels, otherwise known as mini buses, and spent hours in uncomfortable, cramped conditions watching animals roam free, swimming, lounging in the sun and playing.

The animals treated the humans with contempt, made them go round and round in circles, poked fun at them and did some extremely rude things whenever the opportunity arose. So why do people put themselves through all this? Why do they go on safari?

I think if the people in my group were honest, they would admit they go for “The Kill”, for that electrifying, unexpected moment when a lioness pounces on an impala. They also go to taste the terror they feel when their own lives are in danger. And they go “to own” an experience, to have something other people don’t possess so they can talk about it.

I happened to be around for “The Kill”, when a pride of lions was standing around their prey.

The female brought the food to the dominant male in the group who was the first one to eat his fill. When he finished the animal became fair game for the rest of the family. The ‘old man’ was clawing at the flesh and gnawing on the bones when one of the young lads made a challenge, pushed him aside and started to eat the meat before his father had finished. The old male lion let out an outraged, almighty roar that was echoed by the younger cub. This deafening, stereophonic raw sound seemed to attack us from every side and continue forever. I can still hear that roar in my mind.

The two lions reared up on their back legs and attacked each other.

Our mini bus was too close, about 10 feet away. The windows were open and the top was up. We could see the muscles and sinews in their bodies swell with a deadly anger. We were trapped and realised that the only thing separating us from these two fighting animals was a thin sheet of tin and glass that they could easily demolish any time they wished.

This was our only protection when the two lions used fangs and feet to rip into each other. They circled our bus and we simply stood there watching for four or five ice cold moments in the Kenya heat. We saw the explosion of violence, the victory of the father and the younger lion make a second and third attack until he limped away from the pride radiating howls of rage.

After that experience we definitely had something that other people didn’t possess, but the question was – what could we do with it?

One grandmother on the safari finally found her voice, recovered enough to lean down to my six-year-old son and ask him exactly what he would say to his classmates back home at school in Oxford about this safari.

“Nothing,” came the reply. “They wouldn’t believe me.”



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