Animal Kingdom

A tour of king shaka’s old hunting preserve fills ranee sahaney’s personal memory card to the brim.

- Ranee Sahaney

Our escape from Durban is steady but swift, a driving rain hurrying us on along the road unspooling ahead of us like a dark wet ribbon through rural Kwazulu-Natal (KZN) province. Emerald foliage cascades down either side of the highway, the scent of rain on dust greets us as we down our windows and thrill to the prospect of exploring the wilderness in the legendary kingdom of Zululand. These ancient vistas are home to some of South Africa’s finest game reserves— Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve, Thanda Private Game Reserve, Thula Thula Private Game Reserve, and more.

Our destination is Hluhluwe- Imfolozi. We spend a good part of the drive trying to get our tongues around Hluhluwe—‘shlu-shlu-wee’. We are travelling to the great expanses where King Shaka (1816-1887) hunted animals with inordinate fearlessness and rose to become a charismatic warrior king. It’s not unlikely that during his forays here he was inspired to reinvent the ‘buffalo horn’ formation which the Zulu army used so effectively to surround the British camp and destroy it at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879.

The Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Centenary Capture Centre sets a benchmark throughout Africa, we learn. It has cast in stone its huge success in the conservation of the white rhino, which was close to extinction before they stepped in with a programme for their survival. This is the reserve where Operation Rhino took birth in the 50s and 60s. (India too is involved with the conservation of its own depleting rhino population under the umbrella of Operation Rhino.) Today the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve is host to the largest white rhino population in the world. White rhinos differ from black only in the way they feed, we learn: the former graze on grass, the latter munch on tree leaves and other foliage.