Growing up, my family spent most of our holidays on safari and in Southern Africa’s various national parks. It was during those early years that my passion for the bush first took root. At various stages in my life, I considered working in the bush in one way or another, and as I grew older, that pull only intensified. I was told, as most of us are, that I first needed a proper qualification before following my passion. So I schooled in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, attended Stellenbosch University, and completed my accounting articles in Cape Town, qualifying as a Chartered Accountant. It was a path I committed to fully, but the bush never really let go. Eventually, I decided it was time to stop thinking about it and actually do it. I handed in my notice, left the corporate office behind, and found my way to Londolozi, and I have not looked back since.

People ask me often what the attraction is. The honest answer is that it isn’t one thing; it is the overall feeling of being out here. I was always very aware that the world I lived in, in the city, was a world entirely created by humans. I wanted to learn about the rest of it. The world out here has existed for millions of years before us and belongs to every other living species on the planet. Being a part of it, even in a small way, matters to me. On top of that, you are never as present as when you are in the bush, whether sitting at a sighting or watching a fire at night. There is an aliveness to it that is difficult to explain and impossible to replicate.

I want to share two moments that have stood out so far. Not necessarily the most dramatic sightings, but the ones that have meant the most.

The first came during one of the final stages of ranger training, a week of solo walks across the reserve. Over seven days, I covered 182 kilometres on foot through the Londolozi wilderness. It sounds daunting, and it is, but it is a carefully structured exercise. By that point in training, you are well-equipped and knowledgeable enough to be out there alone, armed, in radio contact, and checking in with camp every hour. The goal is not adventure for its own sake. It is about learning the land deeply, becoming attuned to your surroundings, and genuinely understanding what it feels like to be part of the ecosystem rather than just passing through it. By the end of the week, the bush feels different. You move differently in it.

On day three, I came around a corner to find a pack of wild dogs lying under a tree about 30 metres away. I was downwind and positioned behind a tree, and they had no idea I was there. I sat and watched them for a while. At some point, I looked at my watch, 2pm on a Tuesday. I thought about where I would have been sitting at that exact moment in my previous life. For me, it was not the most dramatic wildlife encounter I could have hoped for. But it was the moment I knew, without any doubt, that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Then the wind shifted. One of the dogs caught my scent, gave a sharp bark, and the whole pack scattered in every direction. I am honestly not sure who got the bigger fright.

The second moment is more recent, and connects to a story that many of you will already be following closely — the Ximungwe Female and her cubs.

The Ximungwe Female gave birth around the 4th of January this year, and the weeks that followed were a careful, patient exercise in trying to keep tabs on her. She is a leopard we know well, but she chose her den sites in terrain that made them incredibly difficult to find, and she moved the cubs more than once. Sightings were limited and hard-earned. The cubs are now around three months old and are at a fascinating stage, their mother should be beginning to take them to carcasses, introducing them to meat for the first time, which marks a significant shift in their development.

One of the only shots Sean Zeederberg got of the curious and particularly alert cubs of the Ximungwe Female.

On an off day with no guests, tracker Geshom Mathebula and I headed out early one Monday morning. I want to be clear about the dynamic here: Geshom was imparting wisdom, and I was doing the learning. The goal was to find the Ximungwe Female’s latest den site. Not long after sunrise, we found her tracks and, with one or two other team members joining the search, we began closing in. Eventually, after hearing impala alarm calls nearby, we managed to find her, but her cubs were nowhere to be seen.

That process, going from an impression in the ground to finding an animal kilometres away, is one of the things I find most extraordinary about life out here. Watching Geshom and the other trackers read the bush is like watching someone read a newspaper in a language you are only beginning to learn. Every crushed blade of grass, every displaced stone, every disturbance in the soil tells a story. These animals have been moving through this landscape for millions of years, perfectly shaped to occupy their niche within it. The tracks they leave are a record of that, and following them feels like a privilege.

After the guest vehicles had come and gone, Geshom and I stayed out and waited. As midday approached, the Ximungwe Female got up and began to walk. Now in a vehicle, we followed, at a distance, this time knowing that she was very likely to be going back to a place she had possibly left her cubs. Eventually, she lay down under a bush and began making a distinctive soft contact call, a chuffing sound that a leopard uses to summon her cubs. And then, out of nowhere, two small cubs came bounding out towards her. A moment of elation, we had done it and this was the first intimate moment I had seen the Ximungwe Female’s cubs.

There may have been a discreet fist pump or two.

We sat in silence and watched. It was not a picture-perfect sighting by any measure, no golden light, no dramatic action. But the build-up, the process, the privilege of being the ones to find her in that moment, that is what made it something I will be telling people about for a long time.

The Ximungwe Female and her cubs are very much an ongoing story, and one I am hoping to contribute more updates on as these cubs continue to grow.