To stand close to a fully grown wild elephant is a very humbling experience. To find yourself among an entire herd is nothing short of petrifying.

“Do you think they will charge us?” I asked Deb Tittle, my Zambian guide. “After all, they used to be poached here in the past, didn’t they?” “Yes they did,” she whispered. “And elephants never forget.”

‘Bugger,’ I thought. ‘I’m about to be turned into paste.’

Despite the apparent Bear Grylls-like situation, I wasn’t in fact in any particular danger. Not so long as I followed Deb’s instructions. “Now remember to be very, very quiet, please,” she hissed. “We wouldn’t want to agitate them, would we?”

I was ‘enjoying’ a five day walking safari in one of the world’s most untamed destinations, the South Luangwa National Park, a location known for its vast herds of elephants, its enormous population of lions and its humongous collection of hippos.

As such, my adrenal glands were feeling a wee bit overtaxed and my poor heart was all of a flutter.

Over the previous days we had walked up to lions (which I hadn’t been aware you could do without becoming dinner) and we had skirted a large group of buffalo without so much as eliciting a snort from them. I had sat on a grassy knoll with crocodiles and walked beneath a tree with a leopard in its branches.

All well and good, but despite the progressive galvanization of my testicals and the stiffening of my upper lip (as opposed to continuously needing to go to the toilet) none of the above encounters had prepared me for the sight of 20 or so pachyderms lurking in the bushes, metres away. We were almost on top of them and I hadn’t seen or heard a thing.

“It’s amazing how quietly they move isn’t it,” Debs whispered.

The vegetation along the banks of the Luangwa River is thick and tangled in places: a dense forest of brush and leaves which reduces visibility to zero. As a result, all I could see of the nearby elephants were some wrinkly knees, a few dangling trunks, and one very large swinging penis.

“They haven’t seen us, but should the wind suddenly change then they might get upset. If that happens, you must follow Baron as quickly and calmly as possible.”

Baron Nvoju, the armed component of our four-man outfit, had already plotted a safe route past the herd and was silently creeping ahead using tree trunks as cover. Eventually, he stopped, put down his gun and beckoned for me to follow.

It was the longest and most enlivening 20 metres I have ever had to walk.

The South Luangwa National Park is perhaps Africa’s most wild and rugged region: a 9050km2 valley bordered by the gently flowing Luangwa River (a tributary of the mighty Zambezi). As such, it is home to a great diversity of plants and animals and supports some of the largest concentrations of wildlife in the world.

It may be rugged, but that doesn’t mean it has to be rough. Every night a special ‘walking safari’ camp was erected in the bush solely for the ‘on foot’ clients like me, while chefs were brought in to cook up a feast of delectable desirables (the smell of which must send the local wildlife into dribbling fits). And as for the tent? Well, it was hardly a tent at all, with its comfy mattresses, fresh linen and patio furniture. Chilled wine was served, hot showers prepared and suspended from a tree, and best of all, cream teas made whilst the local wildlife watched on in slack jawed wonder.

These fly camps (as they are called) may be sumptuously comfortable but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a good night’s sleep. It’s only the stone deaf who could sleep through the cacophony of roaring lions, croaking frogs, giggling hyenas and trumpeting elephants that fill the African night. It’s exhilarating though, and on the face of it, one of the most magical experiences I have had in my life.

“Despite what you may have been told, it’s not really dangerous out here in the African bush,” Debs told me as we sat at a river bend watching two big hippos trying to evict each other’s eyeballs with their scythe like tusks. Blood dripped from their faces and the noise coming out of their oversized mouths was akin to that made by a Harley.

“It’s very peaceful here,” she continued. “And as long as you move quietly and cautiously with your senses wide open, everything is fine.” The smaller of the two hippos backed down after a while leaving the champion to stretch his maw open as wide as he could and brandish his fangs victoriously at the sky. They were red with gore. Peaceful my arse!

Wandering around in the bush takes a lot of concentration - not only the sights, but also the local sounds and smells as well. More often than not you hear and perhaps even smell an animal long before you see it; and that’s what gives you time to put yourself in the best position from which to safely watch it. This skill was one I couldn’t fathom at first. During the first few days I’d found the need to concentrate on everything around me a real strain. Each twig that snapped gave me heart palpitations, each whiff of antelope dung conjured up images of a charging black rhino, whilst behind every tree an imaginary famished carnivore waited. But eventually – with skillful tuition from Debs - I began to get it. After a while, the effort became paradoxically relaxing. With my mind focused intently on the ‘here and now’, there was little room left over for the usual worries of everyday life. The associated stresses of my back home melted away like ice-cream in a glasshouse. And as for the woes of the global recession and my ever-shrinking savings? The chances of being flattened by an elephant eclipsed pretty much everything else.

Walk on the Wild Side

Forget Land Rovers - when Dale R Morris went to the game park, he went on foot