Mesmerised by all the right spots
By Tom de Castella
Published: November 19 2005, Financial Times UK.

Panthera pardus, Africa's most secretive and intriguing wild animal, drew us to Namibia. The leopard eludes most visitors as well as most Africans. The other pull was the desert, which makes up the majority of this huge empty land of only 2m people.

Desert is a state of mind. When you stop at the side of the road you are at once thrilled by the nothingness and frightened by it. The enervating heat engulfs you first. Then the stillness hits you. Should I have left the engine running? What happens if it won't start again? But there's a purity, too. It's as far from modern life - the noise, the clutter, the hype - as one can get. You are both insignificant and important, the only people, seemingly, for some thousands of miles.

The Sesriem camp in the heart of the Namib desert is a special place. Each pitch is well spread out and marked by a tree - essential shade in the daily battle with the sun. But on our first night in the tent we could have done with closer neighbours. First there come a few distant noises, followed by heavy breathing and the scraping of feet near the tent. Then a sudden stampede of what sounds like a dozen beasts. In the morning, surprised to find ourselves alive, I ask the campsite manager about it. "Oryx," he says, referring to the desert antelope with long straight horns. "Are they dangerous?" we ask. He looks pityingly at me and shakes his head.

We are soon on our way to Sossusvlei, the main attraction, a wide pan that once every decade fills up to become a sparkling oasis, home to wonderful plants and birds. When we get there, it is a very big sandpit. But, even without the water, the dunes, climbing steeply away from the vlei, are an impressive enough sight. It is the classic desert scenery of apricot mountains, their form seemingly worked at by sculptors to form a perfect parabola, their ridges sharpened against the sky, their contours tinted by the sun and eddied by the wind. Climbing them is a strange sensation. They look so solid but as your feet sink into the sand you feel that this is a very movable kind of mountain. Most visitors get a lift but we decide to walk the three miles back to the road. It is a humbling experience. Our water is drunk by the halfway point and, as the walk passes the hour mark, the sweat pours from our brows and the tour vehicles don't come past, we question whether we are following the right tyre tracks. Pausing once or twice under the remarkably resilient thorn trees, we can make out through the haze impala, the lithe deer-like antelope watching us from the shadows of other such trees. It is a strange sensation, partly endearing, partly sinister, our every move noted by a dozen pairs of eyes.

Later, back at the tent, sipping cold Windhoek lager, watching the desert turn from gold to pink to ochre as the sun falls behind the black hills, we reflect on the walk. It has taught us more about the unforgiving, life-sapping stillness of the desert than our long drives or the guidebooks ever could.

Leopards don't live in the desert. We have to go to Okonjima for that. This guestfarm, 125 miles north of Windhoek, is home to the AfriCat Foundation, a non-profit organisation that rescues captured or injured leopards, rehabilitates them and releases them back into the wild.

We are staying at the Bush Camp, which in spite of its name is luxurious and a little less relaxed than it likes to think it is. Leopard is considered an endangered species worldwide although in southern Africa they are less badly affected. But they are still incredibly hard to see.

The difference is that at Okonjima you can cheat. The leopards are in the wild but you have the technology to find them. The leopard wears a special collar that is programmed to transmit a specific radio frequency. The signal is tracked using radio-telemetry equipment, which measures the distance one is away from it. By listening to the beeps on the receiver (like sonar) you can work out how close you are to the leopard. With our guide, Dean, at the wheel of the open Land-Rover, we trundle along the rough red earth tracks. He tells us our mission is to find TJ, a male, or MJ, a female who has cubs.

Every so often we stop, Dean climbs on to the bonnet and waves around a receiver that looks a bit like a lightning conductor. After half an hour there is nothing registering on the sonar. He decides to head up to the other side of the valley. After a while we pass a herd of giraffes. It is then that Dean stops and we hear our first beeps from the receiver. We sit up and begin peering through every bush. The beeps get louder.

To know that you are near a leopard but can't see it is exciting but excruciating. Then, we turn a corner, and there she is, nonchalantly sitting on a mound.

At first sight, MJ is smaller than I expected, hardly bigger than a dog. But she is perfectly formed and totally unaware of her effect on us. Before we can take in her markings, she rises and effortlessly pads off up a path. We follow at a discreet distance in the truck. She disappears for a moment or two but we find her again sitting on the path, her nose raised to the air, her top lip quivering. She's smelling for food and we finally get to look at her properly. If you believe Kipling, then the leopard got his spots from the finger marks of an indigenous Ethiopian hunter.

" 'Now you are a beauty!' said the Ethiopian. 'You can lie out on the bare ground and look like a heap of pebbles . . . You can lie out on a leafy branch and look like sunshine sifting through the leaves . . . Think of that and purr!' "

"How the Leopard Got His Spots" denotes the amazing camouflage but doesn't do justice to the animal's grace. Her coat resembles a rich tapestry - from the inkiness of the black spots on her front legs and the variegated darkness of the rosettes on her back and haunches to the lustre of her golden- beige background.

Seeing this big cat's whiskers, you think of its domestic cousin but its powerful build, serious eyes and strong jaw remind you that you are in the presence of a hunter easily capable of killing a man. All big cats cause a frisson of excitement. You watch them and time seems to stand still. With a leopard, the largest spotted cat in Africa, you are mesmerised by its beauty, moved by its solitariness, aware that this might be the only time you ever see one.

We follow MJ for a while, Dean a master at knowing how far into the bush he can take the Land Rover. Eventually she disappears, probably to find her cubs. On the way back to Bush Camp, the dark sky rumbles and the rain begins to pound on our hastily erected canvas cover. We barely notice, still thinking about panthera pardus, the greatest secret of the African bush.