I was at the back of a group of eight horse riders when one of my fellow safari camp guides called my name, nodding to the patch of forest behind me. I turned to see a male lion, fully grown, not 10 metres away.
I’d been working as a backup guide at the safari camp in Botswana for a year and had seen lions a few times – usually in the heat of the day when they were relaxed, lying down, digesting food from the night before. Guests paid to come on guided rides between tented camps 20 miles apart.
It was a very remote area. It was the end of the season and the last safari ride of the year. We had left at 7am that morning; it was three hours later when the lion appeared.
Just as I saw it, the horses bolted, leaving riders hanging on as the lion began its chase. I wasn’t in control of my horse, Acaba, which was heading into much thicker bush, away from the path and the rest of the group. I realised that the lion had chosen to herd Acaba away from the others – maybe because he was the only chestnut, a brighter, more distinctive colour than the rest.
Acaba, a purebred Arab gelding, was running for his life. At that moment I thought this was the end; that we were going to die together. I screamed in pure panic. Suddenly Acaba ran into a really thick patch of bush and skidded to a stop, hurling me out of the saddle and into a thorn bush. By the time I extricated myself, the lion was killing him.
As I got to my feet I realised that the roaring in my ears was in fact the thundering sound of the lion’s roar: silent during the hunt, he was now in full cry. I was only two metres away and Acaba was on the ground, feet in front of him, trying to push himself up. But the lion was on top of him, covering his body entirely, his front feet around Acaba’s neck.
I grabbed at a device hanging around my neck. Invented in Canada, it’s known as a bear banger; it’s slightly bigger than a pen and made of metal. It has a spring, and when you pull the trigger the spring fires off canisters that explode when they land. It’s like a small firework but as loud as a shotgun. Somehow my panic subsided; I found myself moving closer to Acaba and the lion.
I pulled the trigger but nothing happened. Luckily, the lion didn’t even look at me – he was only interested in mauling the horse. I squeezed again and this time I could see the explosion on the ground behind him. He got up and ran away. Acaba bolted in the opposite direction.
I reloaded the bear banger and instinctively started following the lion, worried that he would try to find Acaba. That’s when I heard one of the guides shouting. The rest of the group were behind him, and the look on their faces brought home to me what had just happened. A group of lionesses was now watching us from some distance away and we had to get out of there. I was shaking as I mounted one of the guide’s horses.
The other guide radioed for the support vehicle, and when it arrived the owner of the safari company and one of the local guys went in search of Acaba. The delta is so lush and green, it’s hard to find tracks, but in the end they found him. He was still alive, but bleeding from deep wounds to his neck. They put him in the flat bed of the vehicle and transported him to base camp.
It took the vet more than four hours to stitch him up. He said that he could see Acaba’s jugular and that he would have died if he’d been left any longer. In the weeks that followed, I bathed and dressed Acaba’s wounds for an hour at a time, three times a day – a healing process for both of us. Acaba saved my life and I saved his.
Today, 18 months later, I’m back in England and Acaba is back at work in the safari camp, fully recovered and being ridden again. I now work at a racing yard in Compton where I ride four racehorses every morning. I didn’t feel I was being brave at the time – it was just gut instinct – but now I feel proud I had the courage to get up and fight the lion off.
• As told to Alex Hannaford
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