May 21: The Flight to Livingstone, Zambia
First impressions: Africa is just like I have imagined; just like the Nat Geo documentaries; but so much more real and tangible and just so much more than what we have already seen on film.
The land I see below me is of a different colour than the earth I have seen before on other continents.
This land is a dry, dark, rich terracotta-burnt vastness punctuated sparsely by dwarfish trees. This land is moist mahogany brown-black where it is dug and turned. The grass here is not green, it is sand coloured, arid-looking yet lush and tall and wild.
The green I see is not the tender-rice paddy green of Bengal or Kerala; it is not the bright, spring green of the Gangetic plain; it is not even the darker-mango green of the greater trees back home.
The green on the trees here is more mature, more olive and tinged with a shadow, somehow more “knowing” and experienced; seeming to me the leaves of an ageing continent, fully fruited and tiring into over-ripeness.
Africa overall seems big, dry, bare, poor, ancient, primitive, wild.
The colour-palette of the land ranges from dark-earth to red-terracotta to orange to olive to yellow. Bright, light blue skies, white wispy clouds and brilliant red sunsets over the mighty, mysterious, dark blue Zambezi River complete the picture.
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