The middle of nowhere

Photo of the week. Another new leopard. A skittish female. In the middle of nowhere - unused to cars and paparazzi

Highlight of the week: A close up elephant encounter on Ian and Ruth's deck adds an extra dimension to our sundowners

Lowlight of the week: Ants invade our kitchen and get into our cereal

Maximum temperature: 32 degrees Celsius

Rainfall: Not a drop

It’s a thought game. Often played during sundowners. A grounding exercise. A contrast between our insignificance and the scale of the great unknown. We sit on the bank of the Luangwa river. Looking at the detail: An ant lion beneath our chairs. Flicking sand to prepare its lair. Watched by bigger creatures above. We gawp. Yet above us lies Mr Musk’s eyes in the sky. Watching us, deep in impenetrable bush. In the middle of nowhere.

Back in Yorkshire we mention our alternate universe. God’s own county is far removed from our Zambian Eden. Yorkshire folk struggle to get to grips with the nowhereness of our Valley. Yet David Attenborough, as always, brings things neatly into perspective. Kingdom was filmed in our back garden. Google Earth might just find us too: Find Lusaka on a map of Africa. From the capital take a 4-wheel-drive. Head for 10 hours towards Malawi. Turn left at the last town by the frontier. Drive another 3 hours north if you dare. You will find us here. At the end of the road. In the middle of nowhere.

Today we have an emergency call to a bush-camp. Deep in the park. A camp called Nsolo. Usually a 90 minute drive from the main gate. Easy to find on a good day. When the roads have been graded. When the flood water has abated. Jason checks that Keith is happy to find his own way there. Time and Tide offer a driver. But Keith rashly declines. As the longest serving Valley doctor he thinks he knows best. What could possibly go wrong?

Jason suggests the 05 is drive-able. Keith mistakes the 05 for the direct route to Nsolo. We drove direct to Nsolo for our stroke programme 2 years ago. Through wilderness and swamp country. He plots a route on Gaia. I remark that that’s not the 05. But the 05 is not labelled on Gaia. We have a decent car with 4-wheel-drive. We have a sick patient. Waiting in camp. In the middle of nowhere. We head off, further into nowhere.

We sign into the park at 11:35. And trundle up North. Our plan to drive straight there. See our patient. Have lunch. And then perhaps womble back along the scenic route. The park is quiet. Most tourists now back at their lodges. Resting after early morning drives. Not a single vehicle to be seen. The first half of our road is graded and unchallenging. Our spirits are high. We gravitate from nowhere, deeper into nowhere.

But then we reach a crossroad. An impasse. The planned road ahead vague. Ungraded. We are expecting to go straight on. Gaia tells us that is where our road leads. But straight on is just bush. No evidence of our main road here. We opt to turn right and after a few minutes take a road left. Hoping to get back to our main road. Roads in the bush are never straight. They meander around – around bushes and trees, water holes, dry river beds. We are mostly heading the right way. But we are no longer following a road mapped out on Gaia. At this stage I am not too worried. We are following a track with fresh tyre marks. Not the first car to pass this way this year. We are also still orientated. We are heading to boreholes numbers 1, 2 and 3. The boreholes pepper the parched wilderness. Pulling the hardy desert creatures. To the middle of nowhere.

Another junction presents us with a choice. Left towards our “main” road; or right towards the scenic Luangwa river? We have a sick patient, deep in the bush. We go deep. And turn left. Gaia squeaks with delight as we regain the main road. But as we follow tyre marks on familiar tracks, chaos theory takes over. The track leads into barely driven dried pock marks. Old elephant and hippo foot prints. The mud slows our progress, but our years of bush driving experience permits us to press on regardless. Deeper into nowhere.

It's 12:30. The absence of fresh tyre prints or efforts to grade our road cause me to sink into despair. Keith stops to survey a particularly green stretch of track. Long grass and swamp reeds betray the hopelessness of our trajectory. I remind Keith that Jason had recommended the 05. Keith abdicates and accepts his co-driver’s directive. Turn back. 180 degrees. Head back toward the scenic river route. Back from nowhere into a different nowhere.

Keith makes a good choice. Narrowly escaping a bad choice, that could easily have left us stranded in a swamp in the middle of nowhere, without a phone signal. In a jungle too deep for Elon Musk to find us. Let alone a light aircraft. And nobody knows where we are. Jason thinks we are on the 05.

But the right option also seems to be the wrong option. These tracks have not been driven. We check out 2 blind ending trails. And follow our bread crumbs back to the wrong T junction. We turn back towards our origins. And find an inauspicious track off to the left. Vaguely, in the right direction for the Luangwa river. It has been graded at some point in the past. The distant past. Probably last year. Tyre tracks are elusive. We wind around more boreholes always choosing the most promising route. But all routes do not exist. At least not on Gaia. In the middle of nowhere. We face elephants overjoyed to find borehole water. But this is no time to continue my elephant desensitisation therapy. Keith chooses wisely and veers off. Fortunately the track allows him to progress. Away from elephants. Good day or not?

It's now 13:00. We are both hungry. And stressed. Our sick patient is either sicker or perhaps just annoyed that she is sitting out a possible activity. The windy track seems ever more vague. We traverse a dry river and the track through nowhere deteriorates further. We need a back up plan. A get out of jail card, in case our road to nowhere goes nowhere.

I play my joker card. The doc phone briefly suggests that I might be able to place a call. I connect briefly and repeatedly with Jason on our unknown unknown road. Jason? Please could you let our patient know that we are struggling to find a safe route to Nsolo. Jason is aghast that we are nowhere near the 05. Could you perhaps send me a pin? He asks. In case we need to recover your bodies at a later date? He jokes. His joke cancels out my joker card. A sense of humour failure is imminent. Keith stops the car briefly to call Jason back. The signal seems good so Keith presses on. Ignoring my pleas to stop and wait for help. Magically, Mzungu, our dusty vehicle, somehow finds a graded road. And Jason’s need for body bags stands down.

From nowhere we bizarrely recognise whereabouts in nowhere we are. Puku plain. A name for a favourite hunting ground. Predators stalk. Invisible. Puku, inappropriately relaxed, greet us with territorial calls. We too fail to spot the cats and dogs in the long grass. So relieved to be back in play. Still in nowhere. But at least in a known unknown part of nowhere.

It is now 13:40. More than 2 hours in to our 90 minute journey. But we now have a graded road to follow. We continue North. Familiar landmarks to pass. The 3 Chipembele dips in the road. The Chikunto turn off. The turn off to Kakuli camp. Another 45 minutes to reach Nsolo. We arrive at 14:30. Our doubled journey time reflecting all the double entries. Blind endings guided by a blind satnav unable to find the way through the middle of nowhere.

Our lunch awaits, but we take another turn to the left. Lunch can wait – even if my hanger screams out NO. Our patient patient had to turn down the opportunity to see wild dogs on Puku plain to wait for her wayward doctors. She squints at us, not daring to believe that it’s possible to see a doctor in the middle of nowhere.

Our sick patient later joins us as we dine. Bellies full, we can now see the funny side of Jason’s gallows humour. Human again. And alive.

It’s 15:15. We decide to strike for home. We head back from nowhere to nowhere. No short cuts this time. We take a scenic route, for the sake of argument. Our intel advises that Puku plain might be worth a pause. Vultures, this time, betray the presence of well fed dogs. And their tasty excrement. Under a shady Winterthorn tree. The lone lion having slunk off in search of buffalo.

Nowhere redefined, we reach a version of home at 17:30. Three phones ping manically. Filling our agenda for the rest of our dog-eared day. Nowhere has it’s advantages. A place, defined by nothing.

PS. Our article has now been published in Lifestyle Medicine. Follow this link for a good read!

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/lim2.70064

Remote cam photo of the week. Meet Marjorie. One arm missing and no tail. A long term resident of Kapani. Still very cheeky.

Wild dogs on Puku plain - limbering up before an evening hunt

Trying to muster the troops to go out hunting

Sundowners by the Luangwa - the original middle of nowhere

Our GPS system Gaia telling us we are off road in the middle of nowhere

Elephant desensitisation continues on Ian and Ruth's veranda