Every morning I wake up at 5am and for want of a better thing to do I go for a walk. The first half of the walk I do on a paved road because it is pitch dark and I don’t want to fall over a rock or a hyena.
I take the serpentine road that descends into the wadi and I pass by a lot of animals who are hanging around waiting for the sun to appear and a lot of other animals who have been up all night working and are on their way to their bunkers to get some shut-eye; they pretty much ignore me, they are in their world and I am in mine – I have on my headphones and I’m listening to a talking head – but of course I love the gentle ibex and the fact that they are close enough to touch. At the bottom of the wadi I walk along the dry river bed for about one kilometre then I cut back to the cliff face and start the ascent back to the house; by now the sky is lighting up.
The climb is strenuous but not challenging.
At the point at which the dawn starts to become unbearably beautiful I stop, sit down and take out the thermos. If I hadn’t given up smoking this would be the perfect moment to roll a cigarette.
Occasionally my daughter’s dog gets out of the house and follows me and this is not good. On one occasion this fool who has never seen a predator chased a large fox, on another a group of four unimpressed jackals who luckily for her, didn’t bother to chase back. So I have stopped taking her and I am now offering our guests to come with me instead. They invariably say yes but when it comes to it they don’t always appear. I discretely check for signs of life coming from the rooms and if there is no light I just put on my headphones and go on my merry way. Sometimes they are outside their rooms and ready to go. We start walking together, discussing this and that. But by the time the skies begins to clear, everybody usually stares in silence. The walk lasts for one hour walking at a brisk pace.
All the pictures in this post were taken by Pascal Potier and Anne Worms who joined me for this hike in October 2018.
