Most Inspirational Moment
Many, many moments, but it has to be having a leopard walking directly towards me before sitting down right next to our back wheel. I don't think I breathed for about 5 minutes. Lion cub calling for it's mother, cheetah chase and kill...
Thoughts on Group Leader
Paul Goldstein. Crikey. I'm not sure there's anyone quite like him. I've never met a more hard working, enthusiastic and passionate photographer. The times when it's your turn in a vehicle with him are hard work, and you can feel drained at the end of it but he'll stop at nothing to get in the right place. You'll be shouted at and put under pressure but the trick is to cut through all that to what's important. Watch what he's doing, how he's lining up shots, ask him what he's trying to do etc and learn from being in his presence.
Advice for Potential Travellers
Mainly practical stuff here I think. Firstly, cameras - know yours inside out before you go. Understand how to fluidly change settings and how that affects exposure, focus etc. Be ready to quickly change lenses. Paul seems to have an ability to think a number of photos in advance and it can be hard to keep up, but it's great if can try. And if you've not got a big white lens - hire one. Unless of course you're a Nikon shooter, in which case good luck with Paul!
If you're taking a big camera bag with all your kit in, take a small shoulder bag or similar. With 3 or 4 people per vehicle and lots of big lenses, there's not a lot of space to move big bags around. Decant what you need for a drive (batteries, cards, sun cream, water, smaller lenses etc) into a little bag and leave your big bag in your tent.
Laundry - go light. Daily laundry service, so you literally only need 2 or 3 changes. Take warm fleece for mornings but it gets hot in the day - shorts, sandals etc are the way to go.
Luggage - don't stress over the weight limit. This may of course change, but for me, I was about 5-7 kilos over and both international and internal flights - never checked, no problems.
