"I was born in Kenya, but spent my early life in Manyara National Park, Tanzania, where my father was doing his pioneering research on the social behaviour of wild African elephants. We lived in a series of small rondavels on the banks of the Ndala river, at the foot of a forested escarpment with a waterfall cascading down the cliffs about 100 metres from Camp. I remember splashing in rock pools close to elephants drinking in the river, and bumping into buffalo as we made our way back to our rooms at night. There was a magical place called the Ground Water Forest into which the elephants would disappear for long periods, where natural springs from the Ngorongoro mountain catchment gushed out of the rocks – we’d often stop there to pick fresh watercress in a stream at the end of a day, or climb into the vines wishing we could get higher like the monkeys. We had two little orphaned genet cats and a banded mongoose as pets that my mother had raised by hand, which I think were probably the first great loves of my life.. Speaking of her background."