Don't Look Behind You! : A Safari Guide's Encounters with Ravenous Lions, Stampeding Elephants, and Lovesick Rhinos

Join Peter Allison for a riveting, rollicking, behind-the-scenes dose of everyone’s dream experience—going on safari—and coming through amazed but, thankfully, without a scratch. In Don’t Look Behind You, Allison recounts adventures few would live to tell.

“The best compliment you can pay a travel writer is to read his work and feel like you’re right there with him. For more than two hundred pages, I felt like I was in Africa, up to my neck in danger. I don’t even know this guy, but more than once I lay awake at night, worrying for his safety. Enough adventure, action, life lessons, and laughs to fill a movie and four sequels. The fact that Allison survived to write any of this down is a miracle in itself.”
—Cash Peters, author of Naked in Dangerous Places and Gullible’s Travels

 

Romantic notions aside, being a safari guide isn’t always particularly glamorous. Quite often it is beset with challenges, like having to spend a night in a thorn tree with marauding hyenas below. But safari guide Peter Allison lives for such moments. Here, the author of the widely praised Whatever You Do, Don’t Run details his time spent in safari camps not only in Botswana but also in South Africa, Mozambique, and Namibia—places he loves, despite how much it feels like they just might be trying to kill him.

In Don’t Look Behind You, Allison recounts adventures few would live to tell. Like the time he and a group of bored guides launched a makeshift raft into a foaming river teeming with hippos and crocodiles. Or the afternoon he heard monkeys telling him that a leopard was walking around the camp, and then realized the leopard was in his tent, with him in it.

Join Peter Allison for another riveting, rollicking, behind-the-scenes dose of everyone’s dream experience—going on safari—and come through amazed but, thankfully, without a scratch.
Peter Allison is the

Incredible true tales from a world-renowned safari guide and celebrated authorRomantic notions aside, being a safari guide isn't always particularly enjoyable or glamorous. Quite often it is beset with challenges, like having to spend a night in a thorn tree with marauding hyenas below. But safari guide Peter Allison lives for such moments. Here, the author of the widely praised Whatever You Do, Don't Run details his time spent in safari camps not only in Botswana but also in South Africa, Mozambique, and Namibia—places he loves, despite how much it feels like they might just be trying to kill him.In Don't Look Behind You, Allison recounts adventures few would live to tell. Like the time he and a group of bored guides launched a makeshift raft into a foaming, flooded river teeming with hippos and crocodiles. Or the afternoon he heard monkeys telling him that a leopard was walking around the camp, and then realized the leopard was in his tent, with him in it.In addition to relating his encounters with animals, Allison shares the stories of those tourists who have long been pushing him toward early retirement. Normally respectful of all his fellow creatures no matter how many feet they have, Allison fantasizes about leaving one in particular behind on the Skeleton Coast, a place that receives less than half an inch of rain a year, and is patrolled by lions and hyenas. Join Peter Allison for another riveting, rollicking, behind-the-scenes dose of everyone's dream experience—going on safari—and come through amazed but, thankfully, without a scratch. Part title ......Page 2 Title page ......Page 4 Contents ......Page 7 Acknowledgements ......Page 12 Introduction ......Page 14 Three Little Pigs ......Page 16 Stay Calm, But Move Fast ......Page 24 Titus and the Chameleons ......Page 34 Lights at Night ......Page 42 One Mpondo ......Page 48 Lollipop ......Page 56 A Kinky Tail ......Page 68 The Giggler ......Page 78 Welcome to Botswana ......Page 90 The Water War ......Page 100 Nuts ......Page 110 Snakes and Ladders ......Page 116 Speaking Monkey ......Page 122 Busted ......Page 128 Exile to an Island ......Page 150 Baboon People ......Page 170 Five Nights with Stompie ......Page 186 The Coffin ......Page 200 Nerds, Words and a Snake ......Page 226 Twelve Paces ......Page 230 The Wrong Elephant ......Page 238 The Okavango Detox Disaster ......Page 252 Only Food Runs ......Page 258 An Elephant's Lesson ......Page 266 Don't Ask for Red Drum ......Page 274 Making Diamonds from Coal ......Page 286 Skeletons ......Page 304 Epilogue ......Page 318 About the author ......Page 320 Photographs ......Page 210 A safari guide and author offers true tales from his forays into Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, and Namibia, relating such encounters as having to spend the night in a thorn tree with marauding hyenas below and finding a leopard in his tent with him in it. The author of the widely praised "Whatever You Do, Don't Run" returns with another riveting, rollicking, behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to be a safari guide