Becoming part of the herd on safari in Botswana.

On safari in Botswana, JENNIFER BYRNE finds a joyous sense of freedom by becoming part of the herd.

We’re cantering along on horseback, skirting thorn bushes and kicking up dust, when we come across a herd of grazing giraffes, all spots and eyelashes. They take off, and soon they’re running alongside us. Cantering with us. All six of them, pounding the ground with their plate-sized hooves, keeping pace with the horses. Why are they doing it? Who knows, but it’s glorious. Then we see the zebras.

A dazzle of zebras is the correct collective noun, and a perfect way to describe their crazy-paved rumps and banded legs. They’re from the same family as horses but more standoffish, ornery even, and prone to biting, so we can scarcely believe it when they join in, too. For five magical pell-mell minutes we race together: spots to the left, stripes to the right, 10 willing horses in the middle. “Whoo-hoo,” someone yells. “We’re in a movie!” The rest of us just grin, sucking in dust and wonder. This is a safari with no jeeps. No clacking lenses. No crowds. Just feet thumping, flanks heaving, and a joyous sense of freedom. We are not spectators here. Our horses have made us part of the landscape.

Now, given that landscape is full of leopards and lions, I accept a riding safari won’t be everyone’s choice of holiday. It may even sound a shade outlandish to go charging around the continent of teeth and claws, relying on the good sense and speed of your mount to keep you out of trouble. The elephants are the biggest problem – they used to be hunted on horseback, and elephants never forget, so a charge is always on the cards.

But, really, it’s not so dangerous with experienced guides (carrying old back-up guns, which I’m told have never been fired) at the front and rear. And it’s thrilling to be in the saddle at dawn among hyenas, and elephants, and ostriches, and wildebeests, and antelopes and poker-tailed warthogs.

We’re riding along the Limpopo River in south-eastern Botswana. It was the name that clinched it. In my childhood, my father had read me Rudyard Kipling’s

Just-So Stories tale of how the elephant got its trunk – beside “the great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo”. Adventure and nostalgia are a powerful combination.

My bay gelding is named Selous, after a British explorer and hunter whose real-life adventures inspired author Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines. A horse with a bookish backstory was always going to appeal. But he’s also a beautiful creature, both sturdy and slender. Slender is important because the broader the mount, the tougher it is on the legs and bottom.

At the end of our first day’s riding – a full seven hours in the saddle – we limp into camp to find nine stretchers dressed in crisp cotton sheets and pillows, fanned out in a semicircle beneath the shade of a giant, gnarled mashatu tree, a species that lives for up to a thousand years and grows only on the banks of the Limpopo.

We collapse and stare skywards, seeing first the vervet monkeys frisking in the branches, then the vast sky beyond. At night there will be fires, good food and wine, and endless riding stories.

And hot showers, and a glittering vault of stars, and the nickering of horses getting their hay.

Each evening we head out on a “traditional” safari in four-wheel drives, drinking sundowners, edging close to lions and elephants. And each morning we’re handed our reins and mount those horses, leaving their prints mingling in the dust with the tracks of resident animals, each telling a story of survival.

It’s here, too, that our human story began, where tree-dwelling primates evolved into the big-brained, tool-wielding species we became. On the banks of the Limpopo, our grand adventure on horseback also feels like a homecoming.