It has never occurred to me before that elephant ears — those ridiculously huge, comically floppy things — could look menacing. But it is remarkable how quickly your perspective can change when a herd of wild forest elephants is charging towards your open vehicle, their great grey earflaps getting larger and less cartoon-like by the millisecond.
“To the right!” shouts Jonathan Wright, the owner of the safari company I am travelling with, to our driver, his voice almost completely drowned out by the deafening ensemble of trumpeting sounds coming in our direction. “Right! Right!” I grab on tightly to the safety rail as we lurch round an acacia bush.
The charge is being led by a young mother (mid-twenties, Wright estimates) who does not seem to have appreciated us turning up to her family gathering unannounced, and though we are trying to get away from her as fast as we can, we are facing some most inauspicious driving conditions. We’ve had to turn off the track to try to get around the herd, meaning the ground is bumpy and uneven, and the 7ft-high Hyparrhenia grass — the same stuff that provides such lovely thatched roofs back in the safety of our lodge — is making it difficult to see where we are going. Further, while the sun only set 10 minutes ago, darkness is rapidly descending, as it does in this part of the world.