Story Hunter - Journey Back to the Wild

We meet ourselves in new ways in the wilderness.

In part 1 of this podcast series, I followed the track of the artform of the Story Hunter. But I have always known that to fully embrace life as a Story Hunter, I had to go back to the wild.

The great secret art of my life is being in tune with wildness.

And so, I accepted an invitation to go tracking with the Bushmen people of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. I will refer to the people I met as Bushmen, because that is how this ancient tribe asked me to refer to them.

The Bushmen people of the Kalahari are people of the land. They are also renowned trackers and their energy certainly intersects with that of the Shaman. Tracking is storytelling. Tracking is imagination. Tracking requires one to enter into the being of another, and this too is the realm of the Shaman or healer. A Shaman is tracking and transforming energy. And the Bushmen – they too are healers, conjuring energy from the land for their healing practices.

To explore the place at the intersection of nature and the human psyche is my deepest calling.

To be with the Bushmen people is to go back through time to where this intersection is closer to the surface of consciousness – a rare place in modern times.

I certainly did not know what we would find in the desert. But I hoped that with the Bushmen people, I could touch an older way of life that might teach me how to live in this one.

The Expedition Team

Our team consisted of a small group of elite trackers – masters of their art.

Alex van den Heever: World-renowned wildlife tracker and co-founder of the Tracker Academy
James Tyrrell: Wildlife Safari Guide and Photographic Filmmaker
Innocent Ngwenya: Tracker Academy graduate and trainer who headed up a Leopard Habituation Project in the Okavango Delta, northern Botswana
Otto James: A Bushman, and Tracker Academy graduate from Botswana

The Expedition

Over one thousand miles travelled through the desert

Our expedition starts in Maune, where we stock up on a few essential supplies, our last chance before heading deep into the wildest parts of the Kalahari.
We travel north into the Okavango Delta, the largest inland delta in the world, making it a natural phenomenon that can be seen from space. We visit the Khwai region to the learn about the Tracker Academy’s Leopard Habituation Programme – a remarkable story of nature and humanity working together in a profoundly virtuous cycle.
We then head sound into the Central Kalahari – 36 thousand square miles of harsh desert wilderness. The Kalahari Desert is characterized by almost inhospitable conditions, with temperatures that exceed 104° F and plummet to below freezing, scarce water sources and wildlife and vegetation that has had to uniquely adapt in order to survive. We visit the town of Ghanzi and then move deeper into the Kalahari towards the town of Hukunzi.