My African adventure fit for a QUEEN
Jane Bussman follows in Royal footsteps to marvel at Kenya’s amazing (and larcenous) wildlife
WHEN his daughter stepped on to a plane to Kenya and waved goodbye, the King was too British to tell her he was dying. His doctors, being British, hadn’t told him either, because it was none of his business when he had a job to do. But then this was the 1950s; they’d also told him that cigarettes were good for relaxing his throat.
Netflix’s The Crown whisks us back to the tense days of 1952 when Princess Elizabeth was asked to carry out a Commonwealth tour for George VI, believing he would be cured by the time she returned home.
The 25-year-old Princess escaped Buckingham Palace for Treetops, a rustic treehouse in the Aberdare forest as wild animals rampaged below. It was, by all accounts a dramatic time, and the Princess filmed it, agape at waterbuck goring a rival to death and rhino charging each other.
According to her hunter escort Jim Corbett, when the Princess was told it was time to come in for tea, she asked to take it on the balcony, saying: ‘I don’t want to miss one moment of this.’
The next morning, Elizabeth said she’d had such a good time in Kenya that she couldn’t wait for her father to visit. In The Crown, she is seen writing a letter to the King requesting that she and Philip live in Cyprus like a normal husband and wife. Then Palace aides track her down to her remote location to tell her that the King has died and that she is now Queen. Personally I’d have gone straight back to the treehouse and pulled up the ladder with me.
THE Queen and Philip’s last night of freedom was spent immersed in the lives of animals. I bought a crushable fedora and set out in the couple’s footsteps. Kenya’s safari parks still bring British visitors the same blast of friendliness and fresh air, and floating above the green Aberdare, Treetops still looks like a giant bird hide on stilts.
The original shack was commissioned by war hero Eric Walker, who turned bootlegger to fund his marriage to an aristocrat. Her indoors fancied a treehouse like Peter Pan’s hideout. She got one.
And in 1952, Her Majesty climbed up a rickety 30ft ladder to find herself in two rooms with a cubbyhole for a hunter, in case some leopard fancied a Royal with cheese.
Treetops now has showers and a ramp. Guests are no longer shown escape ladders and told: ‘Ten feet up is enough for a rhino, but 18ft is better for an elephant.’
But it is very much a treehouse; my gin rested on a giant twig thrusting through the polished wooden floor of the bar. I also spotted a buzzer on the wall.
‘If you’d like us to buzz you at night, leave it on,’ said the guide. ‘If there’s a fire?’ ‘If we see animals. One buzz for hyena, two for leopard, three rhino and four elephant.’ Already this was better than anything on television apart from Planet Earth II, and not too dissimilar, as Treetops floats above a watering hole. I had checked into a room over the animals’ pub, with opening time around sunset.
As the sun dropped, I was unpacking my fedora when I saw grey shapes just a few feet below. Dozens of elephants were in a row, drinking at the lake then dipping their trunks in the salty soil for minerals. I was so close I could hear them breathing and grum- bling at each other. The mums were hiding a baby elephant so small it could probably ride in my car.
As I ran downstairs to get even closer, I passed a huge skull. An elderly regular who died last year, said a guide, and given the loyalty of elephants, it is not impossible he was one of the youngsters putting on a show for the Queen all those years ago.
‘When he died the other elephants came to mourn,’ the guide said.
‘Elephants always do. If they’re his relatives, they stand facing away from him, their backs just touching him. For half an hour they stand in silence, then they leave.’
AT TREETOPS, the animals stay long enough for you to realise their faces are as different as ours. One buffalo had a neck as big as Mike Tyson’s, half a tail missing and a rotten temper. I asked a guide why he looked so fed up. ‘He has to look after all the females. There can be 200 females in one family – that is too many.’ He had a point. And his tail? ‘Bitten off by a hyena,’ said the guide. ‘Hyenas also bite off testicles.’ Bad tempered? The buffalo was a living saint.
We saw warthogs, giant forest hogs and colobus monkeys like flying skunks. The baboons, I suspect, were barred from the pub, so they broke in through the fence, sat around drinking, smacked their children and then left. I’m surprised they haven’t been given their own series on Channel 4.
The original treehouse is no