I Was Thirteen Years Old the First Time I Stood on the Bank of the Luangwa.

On why I came back to Luangwa.

I was thirteen years old the first time I stood on the bank of the Luangwa River. I don't remember everything about that day, but I remember the river. The way it moved — slow and purposeful and entirely indifferent to the small boy standing on its edge. Elephants on the opposite bank, materializing out of the mist as if the landscape were assembling itself in real time. Hippos surfacing and submerging without urgency. Grunts, bird calls, and other intriguing sounds all around me. The whole valley operating on a logic of its own, causing sensory overload like I had never encountered and simply more wild and beautiful than I had the words for.

I was thirteen. But that valley made an impression on me, and it never really left.

That was 1984. The years that followed took me far from the valley — a career built, a family raised, a world explored. I have travelled to more than sixty countries — fished remote rivers in Bolivia and Mongolia, climbed mountains in Alaska, explored oceans, wandered wildernesses on five continents. I have seen a great deal of what this world has to offer in the way of wild and beautiful places. But the Luangwa Valley stayed in some corner of my mind the way certain places do — not as a memory exactly, but as a reference point. A standard against which other wild places were quietly measured, and usually found a little wanting.

When my wife and I asked ourselves where we could make something truly meaningful happen — where our commitment could actually change something that mattered — the conversation kept returning to the same place. Three things drew us to the Luangwa Valley with a force that went beyond analysis. The wildlife — extraordinary, increasingly rare, and worth every effort to make it flourish. The wild landscape itself — vast, seasonal, alive in a way that few places on earth still manage to be. And the communities that border the valley's parks. The Zambian people who live alongside one of Africa's greatest wildernesses are among the warmest, most resilient people I have encountered anywhere in the world. Their future and the future of the wildlife they live beside are inseparable — and both deserve far more investment than they have received.

My wife and I felt, in a way that was difficult to explain and impossible to ignore, that we were being called to this place. As if a hand had been placed on our shoulder and the direction made clear. You don't argue with that. You go.

So we came back to Zambia and in 2023 acquired The Bushcamp Company. I want to be clear about what that means and what it doesn't mean. It is neither a lifestyle nor a financial investment. It is not a vanity project. It is a commitment — to the valley, to the wildlife, to the communities, and to the extraordinary team of guides and staff who have been caring for this place for decades and who deserved an owner who understood what this place means.

What our predecessors have built here — and what we have been entrusted to carry forward — is something genuinely rare in the safari world.

The Bushcamp Company was founded in 1999 and carries a lineage that runs directly from Norman Carr — the conservationist who pioneered the walking safari in this valley in the 1950s — through Phil Berry, arguably the finest walking safari guide the Luangwa has ever produced, to the guides Berry has mentored across the circuit today. That heritage is not simply a selling point. It is a responsibility to carry on. And it is the reason BCC has become synonymous with the valley.

We are the largest operator in South Luangwa. Eight properties. A 140,000-acre exclusive use wilderness concession inside South Luangwa. A large local farm. More than $7 million raised for conservation and community programs since the company's founding. Clean water delivered to over 88,500 people. 1,300 students supported through education. These numbers matter — but what they represent matters more. Every guest who comes here is contributing to the survival of something genuinely irreplaceable. We take that seriously.

I sat by a campfire on the bank of the Luangwa last October. My feet were in the sand. The river moved quietly in the dark. And then, somewhere on one of the sandy Luangwa beaches not too far away, a lion roared — that sound that vibrates the air before it reaches your ears — and everything else stopped mattering for a moment.

I thought about the thirteen-year-old boy who stood on this bank over forty years ago and felt something he couldn't name. I thought about my wife, and the conversation we'd had about doing something that mattered. I reflected on our young son who passed away many years ago and will never get to stand where I am standing. I thought about the communities in the villages nearby, and the wildlife beyond the firelight, and the guides who know every animal, tree species, blade of grass, and river bend in this valley by heart.

This is what we are trying to protect. Not the business. The magical moment. These moments — for us, for our guests, and for the generations who will come after us and deserve to feel what I felt at thirteen on the bank of this river.

The valley called us back. Not as guests this time, but as stewards. We are here to stand beside and support the people of this valley, to ensure its wildlife thrives, and to make sure others may one day feel this place as deeply as we have.

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The Bushcamp Company operates eight properties in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, including Mfuwe Lodge, The Villas at KuKaya, and six remote Bushcamps within an exclusive 140,000-acre wilderness concession. bushcampcompany.com