When I was a little girl, I used to turn the heavy pages of the old ledger that were laden with my dad's stamp collection and pore over the mini pieces of art that hung there on small squares of double-sided sticky tape.

Dad worked in a post room for a big engineering firm and as letters and parcels came in from all over the world he would tear off the corners of the discarded envelopes to bring new stamps home to add to his collection.

As a child of ten I couldn't really comprehend where all these different places were, but every so often a name or a picture would capture my imagination. My favourite stamps were from Botswana whose beautiful illustrations of wild animals jumped out from the page and film reels of savannahs teaming with exotic creatures would flicker in my minds eye. The name Botswana sounded magical in itself. It sounded like a place I would never go. Little did I know.

We are soon heading off on a wild camping safari through Botswana and Zambia. We will camp on an island in the Okavango Delta and then travel through the game reserves of Moremi, Savuti and Chobe, ending up at Livingstone to see the mighty Victoria Falls. Wild camping means no fences, no toilets or showers and just a two man tent between us and the great outdoors. Bring it on!

Labels: travel