Right now the great game parks of Africa must look how they appeared when the first man-ape climbed down from a tree and uttered “Wahoo!” (roughly translated as “Oh my giddy aunt!”). Just him (or maybe it was a her), and millions of animals. By the time the people of the world start travelling again the African wilderness will have seen nary a human for several months: it will be like it was more than a century ago, still raw and limitless.

If you have any desire to see the place like the first humans did, you need to start making plans now, to get there before the crowds return and there are more tele-lenses jostling for position than wildebeest trying to cross the Mara River. There may not be a chance like this for another century or more.

There is another gang of characters that is chomping to get back into the wilds. They are the “dagha boys” – a loose affiliation of bush guides and naturalists who collectively represent the most experienced fundis* on the continent. In bush parlance a dagha boy is an experienced old buffalo bull that has left the herd and spends its days alone near water.

There they roll in the mud to get the dagha or clay covering which distinguishes them. One animal you don’t want to cross in Africa is a dagha boy. But ours have been partially tamed, and they are as keen as a cheetah eyeing a gazelle to take you back into the African wilds, to see it like no-one else will – perhaps ever.

One of the old boys by the name Alan McSmith, has been so habituated he’s even been invited to give a Ted Talk (then again it was in Amsterdam, which can be pretty wild).

He can be a bit tongue-tied in front of a large crowd, but to see him in the bush is to see something extremely rare: a person at complete oneness with the wild creatures of Africa, including the biggest and, potentially, the most dangerous