Spreading across Botswana, South Africa and Namibia, the Kalahari meaning ‘the great thirst’ is an exceptionally beautiful living desert. The landscape is characterised by a large semi-arid sandy savannah draped over a gently rolling inland sea of sand covering most of Botswana and large parts of Namibia and South Africa. It is also the last bastion of the indigenous San people with the modern world having enveloped all the other areas they once roamed. The Namibian portion is made up of red sands covered in thin, wispy, mostly golden grass and dotted with acacia trees and wide-ranging wildlife including gemsbok, impala, jackals and cheetah.

After our long, dusty drive from Sesriem in the Namib desert, we finally pulled into Bagatelle Kalahari and bowled up to the reception where we were greeted by the people of reception, with a welcome drink, which unusually was spiked with alcohol. With our guard down due to the consumption of alcohol (only joking we had hardly been tee-total during our tour of Namibia) we signed up for the cheetah feeding and in the morning a walking tour with a Kalahari bushman guide!

Day 1

The cheetah feeding was later in the afternoon. Usually, this is not the type of wildlife experience we’d go for, but it was cheetahs, and we love them. There were many people staying at the ranch, so we ended up filling three game-drive vehicles.

The cheetahs at Bagatelle are all rescued from the wild and were brought to the ranch to save them as they are not capable of surviving in the wild. This was going to be their home for life. There are a couple of things that make cheetahs hard to look after. One they ideally need a lot of space to roam in and secondly, they are quite anti-social, so you can’t throw a lot of them into the same enclosure as they’d kill each other and eat the loser of the fight. So, for the six cheetahs at Bagatelle they had divided them into 3 enclosures; one with two males, another with two females – that was the third thing boys and girls don’t mix – the exception was the third enclosure where there was a huge, old male who had grown mellow with age and young female cheetah.

First up, were the girls.

The three game drive vehicles parked up at the gate to the enclosure, where we were joined by a fourth truck, with the food and the volunteers who would be doing the feeding. The feeding truck went through into the enclosure. These enclosures are huge, several hectares in size. The truck’s arrival got the cheetahs’ interest. Whilst we waited outside, the feeding truck shot off in the other direction, and moments later, we followed in hot pursuit. We arrived at a second gate at the far end of the enclosure where we were let in. A short time later we saw the cheetahs thundering over the hill. This process of chasing the food was to make the process of eating more interesting to the animals. A couple of the volunteers hopped off the truck with big metal bowls full of meat and held to the cheetahs’ faces, who promptly gobbled the food down at a rapid rate. Karen pointed out that this speed of consumption probably meant I was a cheetah in a previous incarnation. If that were true, I have lost a lot of my speed!

Next, we went to the male cheetah enclosure and followed the same routine.

Finally, it was the large male and smaller female’s turn. This time there was no chase. All the vehicles pulled up to a gate. The volunteer feeders went in with their bowls, while we all climbed down from our game drive vehicles. Whilst the cheetahs were eating, we were able to sneak into their enclosure and get a closer view.