Malawi Ride by Jasper Winn

David Foot owns one fifth of a whole country's total stock of horses. All of which would, obviously, be unbelievable if the country we were talking about was say Ireland or Spain. Or even Luxembourg. But David lives in Malawi, the small, 'warm heart of Africa,' which lies between Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania. And Malawi, quite frankly, is not an obvious horse country. So, out of a mere 120 mounts in the whole nation, some 25 carry David's saddles.

Malawi's lowlands are ideal country for monkeys, elephant, lion, hippopotamus and other 'wild' wildlife, but it's far from hospitable towards even the toughest domestic steed. For a start there's tsetse fly, and the equine ills they transmit. And then there's the heat. And the rough country. And the poor grazing, and the shortage of fodder in what is already one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

In fact if it wasn't for one unique and wondrous geographical feature, the Nyika Plateau, Malawi wouldn't have much - actually, on reflection, it wouldn't have anything at all - to recommend it in the riding department. But Malawi's northern heights are the little-known key to some of the most rewarding opportunities for horsemanship in all of Africa.

The Nyika Plateau is an area the size of Meath, but thrust close on 2,000 metres up into African skies. Sheer walls plummet down on all sides of the plateau, protecting it from the harsher world down below. The Nyika's altitude gives it a temperate climate with cool early morning mists that burn off to leave warm - on occasion very warm - days with clear blue skies and crystal clear views that take in mile after mile of rolling, bracken-stippled moors, gentle slopes and soft peaks. Thick bundlings of trees and shrubs fill tight little valleys and follow the courses of streams.

Seven of us had arrived up on the plateau for a nine-day tented riding safari. In a four-wheel-drive jeep we'd ground our way up the rough dirt track that, a light plane, aside is the only access to this lost world. Coming out of the trees we found ourselves looking over a landscape that could have been the Wicklow Mountains. But the Wicklow mountains in a time before history. In a time before people, even. Because the Nyika has barely, through all the past millennia, been touched by mankind.

True, small groups of hunter-gatherers lived here some three thousand years ago, leaving only a few faded rock paintings to mark their existence. But the Bantu-speakers who settled the surrounding lowlands found the Nyika too remote and too inhospitable to do much more than brave its wilderness to hunt the abundant game. Europeans, Scottish missionaries, first tread the plateau in the late 19th century, but it remained a remote place, allowing Laurens van de Post's account of exploring the Nyika, Venture to the Interior, though written after the Second World War, to read as if experiencing an African landscape of a century earlier.

Recently a luxury lodge - perhaps one of the remotest spots in the world where one can lounge in front of a roaring fire on chintz cushions with a perfect gin and tonic in hand - was built on the edge of the pines. Nearby there is a longer established camp ground, a few cabins and an administration centre. As well as the stables.

With only a few red dirt tracks crossing the plateau, nearly all of its expanse and most of its hidden corners had only ever been accessible on foot. That is until ten years ago, when David brought in his first string of horses from Zimbabwe to start Nyika Safaris. As a boy in the Zomba plateau region of southern Malawi, David had ridden ponies. Then after university and a transcontinental land rover trip back to Malawi, he'd run safaris in Zimbabwe and Zambia. These two strands of his life came together when he began running horse trips into the 'lost world' of the plateau.

At Chelinda lodge we booted and hatted up for the first, shakedown ride. Robert Sichinga and Manuel Mwandira, the local Tumbuka speaking grooms had saddled up a selection of mounts - from a mix of TBs, ex racehorses and boerperd crosses - for our group of evenly matched riders.

Michael and Gill hunted in England's west country, and had worked in Malawi some twelve years before. Diana was a far-flung-horse-holiday veteran with trips in four continents under her breeches. Alan had his own horse, and Jeanne and Gonda were both riding vets. As the McClellan endurance saddles were girthed up, Gonda was taken off to look at a couple of horses in the sick bay. As a specialist horse vet, she was a prized catch up on the Nyika. In this remote country veterinary work was a DIY job, and horse master Drew Williams had to draw on everything he'd learned in his twelve years in the Household Cavalry as troop riding instructor to face everyday conditions up on the Nyika.

In the past week alone two of the horses had come in from the night's grazing loose in the surrounding grasslands with deep puncture wounds in their chests. "Not from leopard or hyena, they must have panicked and run into the pine woods amongst the fallen timber and broken branches," Drew reckoned. He'd done the necessary embroidery, and a made a good job of it, but having a real, live vet to check his needlework was a chance not to be missed.

Ready to ride we mounted up. As I swung aboard Phinga Nvula - 'Rainbow - I was straddling close on one-percent of all Malawi's horseflesh. And arguably the most responsive and forward going one-percent too. "Phinga came up in the second lot we brought in from Zim," David explained, "They'd been running wild on a farm and we got them unbroken and did the job up here." Phinga exhibited all the sure-footedness and confidence of a mare who'd had plenty of experience at looking after herself amidst Africa's challenges. She didn't need me to do much more than sit in the saddle, give the occasional advice on direction and just enjoy myself. Which freed me to look around as we rode out from amongst the trees and into the open spaces beyond.

The bracken brushed my stirrups as we trotted on, a fresh breeze blew clouds across the sky and I was still happily imagining myself hacking out across the Wicklow hills, when suddenly Africa came over the horizon. Because where Wicklow might have produced a couple of rabbits, or a fox perhaps, the Nyika had assembled a herd of eland. More than a hundred head of them, as big as bulls, with unicorn-spiralled horns and a slow stately walk. A group of Crawshay's zebra, their tight monochrome pattern giving them a shimmering out of focus look drifted along with the eland.

That evening in the lodge, we savoured the luxury of hot showers, log fires in our bed rooms, glasses of wine and the menus that Robyn, David's wife, and her staff conjured up in from a kitchen half a country and over an hour by light plane away from the nearest real shops. For the next week then horses would take us to the distant corners of the Nyika National Park and nights would be spent under canvas. Comfort, one felt, might be rationed and it seemed wise to revel in the luxury of the lodge whilst we had the chance.

After the full-Monty breakfast, we rode out the next morning behind David, Drew and Robert, heading south towards Lutete camp and the distant Vitinthiza peak. Almost immediately we were riding not on manmade tracks but in the narrow beaten paths laid down by moving herds of game. They took the easiest contour lines, and dropped precisely into the steep valleys at rare points where it was possible to cross the narrow streams that had cut themselves a man's height and deeper into the earth, making them treacherous and difficult for the horses to cross.

As we rode it seemed that every fold in the hills offered up more wildlife. Duikers, reedbuck, bushbuck, and warthog trotted over the slopes. Buzzards and eagles circled high over head. A troop of blue monkeys crashed through the tangled branches of an archipelago of trees. One hour we'd ride through golden, wither-high grass, with flat topped acacia trees shaped like champagne glasses above us and the next we were threading our way through boulders set like Stonehenges and Newgrange boulders in the earth.

It was a subtle landscape, without the huge herds of animals, and the blood and guts work of prides of big predators that one might find in other African game parks. But it was a real Africa - an old Africa - where it was still possible to ride across its expanse and see nobody else for days on end.

"There are leopard here, and you've already seen jackal, and we did have a single lion up here for a couple of years but he hasn't been seen for a while," explained David, "and just recently a herd of elephants have come up and have settled in on the plateau, but its the whole range of wildlife that's amazing, and a horse is the best way to see it."

He was right, too. On our horses we rode up close to roan antelope and almost in amongst a group of zebra. And every few minutes there was a new species of bird to note.

Late that afternoon we rode down into our first night's camp. Coming over the hill we looked into a sheltered hollow with a neat row of tents, each with two washbowls outside and two sheeted and blanketed beds inside. The veteran Unimog all-terrain vehicle, which had carried this folding village across the rough landscape, was parked up on a hill. Joe Kapira, the camp cook, was working a miracle, including baking bread, over an open fire by the kitchen tent. A table was already being laid for supper. Whilst at the camp's heart a blazing log fire was circled by chairs.

We swung out of our saddles and led the horses into a roped corral. "Right," David announced, when the horses were set fair for the night, "drinks around the fire before dinner. What does everybody want? And who’s first for the shower?" A Heath-Robinson-esque tank suspended above a small stall had already been charged with hot water.

Drinks? Three course dinners? Hot-water bottles in the beds? Showers? Any concerns about comfort or lack of it in the Nyika camps faded away.

We woke at dawn. There was a cool, early morning, autumnal tang in the air as we drank coffee around the fire. But by the time we had returned from a walk to spot birds along the nearby river, followed by a full fried breakfast before mounting up to ride, the day was hotting up.

Our objective for the day was to ride up on the rare roan antelope who grazed the open ground, their heavy horns thrown back from their brows like rockers' quiffs. With Robert left behind in camp, it was Emanuel who rode out with us into the surrounding valleys.

It was fascinating to note how he had taken to riding. "I only saw my first horse some years ago," Emanuel explained, "and the first time I rode a horse I was frightened, but I kept going and I learned to ride." We were approaching a long gentle slope as he told me this, and David was lining everybody up for a canter.

Unshod hooves thudded on the ground as ten riders took their own line across the ground. Phinga set off with the kind of enthusiasm that sets a rider's heart soaring. We galloped on high above Africa. Looking over to the left I could see Emanuel grinning. Looking to the right he'd have seen me doing the same.