On a road most travelled - S100 in Kruger National Park

Let's first get the minor details done with. What? A self driving safari. Where? Kruger National Park, South Africa. How? A cute little VW Golf - manual transmission. When? In the early summer days of December. I don't think why is a question that needs to be answered. This article is all about the who. On the eve of our last day of self driving in the Kruger there is only one animal of the Big 5 that we are yet to see, the leopard - the who.

It is hard to escape the obsession with the Big Five - elephant, Cape buffalo, rhinoceros, lion and leopard - in an African safari. They feature on all the guidebook covers, maps, post cards etc. The Big Five were the hardest to hunt back in the days but they aren't necessarily the rarest to spot. We spotted elephants in each of our drives inside the park. Our second day in the park was unseasonably hot and on this day the lions seemed to prefer the shades near the main driving routes. For someone who has yet to sight a tiger in the wild, seeing multiple lion prides up close over the course of a two hour drive should leave no room for complaints.  But no. I had not seen a leopard yet and that feeling of incompleteness was gnawing inside. I will be the first to admit that the Big Five obsession is wholly inconsiderate to such wonders like the graceful splendour of a foraging giraffe or the dazzle of zebras playing in the summer sun. Even the majestic sight of a male tusker in musth walking towards us in the moonlight does not satiate my leopard needs.

We still have one morning drive left and fortunately our rest camp for the last night is Satara. The name Satara comes from the Hindi word for seventeen. A leftover from the days of the Raj when an Indian surveyor numbered plots in Kruger.

The area around Satara is famous for being cat country and arguably the most famous road in Kruger National Park - the S100 - starts 2 kms to the south of Satara gates. The twenty kilometre long S100 road accompanies the Nwanedzi river (more a stream) and winds along providing great vantage points to spot Kruger's thirsty inhabitants taking a drinks break. Water bodies are also the best spots for lions and leopards to find prey and all the guidebooks, maps and park rangers identify S100 as the best road to spot cats. Fingers crossed.

The Satara gates open at 4.30 AM and there is a line of vehicles queuing up to burst forth into the morning calm. Perhaps they also, like me, hope to catch the final moments of a nocturnal hunt. The vehicles form a procession to S100. We are in formation but as soon as we turn into the S100, our speed drops to 20 kmph and we lose the other vehicles. The longer the time spent on the road alone the better our chances of spotting a leopard we conclude. An irrational conclusion given that our successful strategy so far had been to rush towards a congregation of stationary vehicles and ask them what they are looking at.

The morning is thankfully overcast and brings out the green of the trees better than the blazing hot sun of previous days. Impalas, wildebeests, zebras and chacma baboons are playing on either side of the road. Not a good sign. Preys play when hunters are far. The sight of a Southern ground hornbills group stealthily marching along is nice (nice being the appropriate word for the lukewarm excitement associated with this sight that morning) but a leopard still eludes us.

All is not lost, I console myself after two hours of inching along. Why must the Big Five be the metric of safari success anyway? I saw hippopotamuses fighting in the pond. I saw a male lion yawning 10 feet away from me. Spent a magical ten minutes observing giraffes and elephants assembling at a small water body to quench their thirst. Saw a rhino from afar and Cape buffaloes up close. Got great photos of baby elephants and baby hippos.

So I didn't see a leopard. So what? Four is a better number than five and... hold on. What is that over there? Look look look. And then, just like that, right in front of us a leopard crosses the road. It's almost as if she (could be a he) had been waiting for us to meander along in order to make an appearance. For a full two minutes we were alone with this beautiful cat. Her coat a masterwork of nature. The spots almost seem deliberately spaced out to make random pattern sound moronic. When she walks through the grass, she almost disappears. Highly unlikely we would have spotted her if she hadn't decided to walk in front of our VW. Does her meek expression show fear or hunger? She doesn't run away, stares at us briefly and then turns her back to us. There is no fear there. This is her territory and we are the transient intruders. For a change we get to point out the sighting to cars that have appeared behind us. We contentedly make way feeling unadulterated joy at having shared a couple of minutes of our life alone with a leopard.

Every once in a while in life, if you are lucky, you get these moments when your mind and body are fully in the present. No thoughts about work and other obligations that come bundled up with life. You don't notice the back pain that has been troubling you the last few days. Your hunger, your thirst and other sensory needs vanish, albeit briefly. In that magical moment on the S100 it didn't matter why the leopard crossed the road. All that mattered was who crossed the road.

An edited version of this post can be found here.