Field Notes from Ugalla

He's spent the last week out with guests from the UK. Seasoned travellers they were. They had walked and tracked their way across some of East Africa's best-known country long before they came across Charlie. They had found Charlie on the internet, and as Pay tells it, even the travel agent putting their trip together had barely heard of Ugalla. But then that is the charm of this little-known park: way out in the west of the country, remote and still known to few. 

The guests came to walk and walk they did. Pay set the day's mission early every morning and they headed out after coffee. They saw sable and roan out in the miombo, two male lions on a hippo kill. Spotted hyena, topi, zebra, elephant, hartebeest, a black-backed jackal slipping through the grass. They tried their hand at fishing and pulled catfish from the river. They climbed Pay’s favourite hill and then carried on to the next one for a second long view. 

Pay talked about how much they loved the simple setup of Charlie, nothing too dressed up they said, just the walking, the river, the space, the lack of people. By the end of the first day, they were already working out when they could come back.

This is what Charlie does so well. Its light touch and its ease of movement gets you further out and lets you see more, on foot and in among it rather than watching from a distance. All of that makes the difference, and on the strength of this past week, hard to argue with that.