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I can't say I seek out horse riding opportunities. The last time I rode a horse was certainly not through choice, and was in fact an evacuation from a hotel in India, cut off in a major snowfall. This time the riding was for a different purpose. Here on the Nyika plateau in northern Malawi, we took a chance to go riding and see some of the wildlife in an area where there are very few roads.

No helmets as you can see, although this was some time ago and I suspect even in Malawi now they will not take British tourists with the right gear (or at least a British tour company will not endorse such a trip). I had a frisky young horse who enjoyed jumping around, clearly aware of my discomfort. Two hours on a horse is about as much as a novice can take, and I certainly felt it for the next few days. We did however get very close to zebra and reedbuck.

For me the abiding memory of our short stay up in this wild corner of Malawi (it looks very much like Scotland, the locals will tell you) was the power cut. We stayed within the national park in a small lodge, and we were told that the power only runs between 8pm and 11pm, so we should make sure we do everything we need during that window of time.

Sadly, when 8pm arrived there was no power, and while we sat in candlelight waiting for a flicker of light nothing came. This was not a big deal for us, and we ended up having an early night. In the morning however, our guide did a bit of investigating to find out what had happened, and the truth was more than worth the minor inconvenience. It turns out that, with us being there only three days before Christmas, the Malawian brewery truck (Carlsberg) had delivered double the usual quantity of beer to supply the villagers and the tourists for the next two weeks. When the driver had arrived, he started drinking with the men of the village, and by the time someone was due to get the generators working there was no-one left standing!

We left that morning, but I often wonder whether those who came after us arrived to discover a lack of any beer at the lodge for their Christmas break.