In Namibia's wild north, I learned to track lions - and let go of control

To walk in the African wild - truly wild, where there are no fences or barriers and where big game roams freely - is an exercise in letting go. In letting go of control; of certainty; and of the illusion that we are in charge. Out here, where vultures soar and lions roam, the rules shift. Stripped of the protection of a vehicle, you transform from observer to participant; you become integral to the landscape, inseparable from an intricate ecosystem, and your senses - so dulled by screens and wheels and machines - tune back into life.

I slipped into this heightened way of being while walking through the wilderness at Onguma, a private nature reserve in the far north of Namibia. I'd stepped out of my tent at Onguma's new Trails Camp just before sunrise and into a world that at first seemed silent but, when I really listened, was punctuated by the chack-chack-chack of the red-billed francolin, the hypnotic call of the Cape turtle dove and the very distant, very muffled roar of a lion.

"He's three, maybe four kilometres away," trails guide Liberty Eiseb confirmed as we set down our handcrafted coffee mugs and walked away from camp. "We might come across him this afternoon but for now, let's see what surprises the dry riverbed holds for us."

Onguma shares a boundary with Etosha National Park, Namibia's prime wildlife destination, and the private reserve's 35,482 hectares is home to elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinos and antelopes ranging from the tiny Damara dik-dik to majestic eland, the largest of southern Africa's antelope species. While a walking trail here holds the potential to encounter any of these animals - nothing can be certain out in the wilderness - it's also a chance to observe the small details, the things rarely apparent from the seat of a game-viewing vehicle.

Within a few minutes of leaving Trails Camp - an intimate set-up with just four superbly comfortable tents (complete with their own wood-fired hot tubs), rattan chairs swinging below an enormous camel thorn tree and plush couches set under a stretch tent - I begin to notice the subtle scents of the bush. Wild sage. Fresh earth. Rain, perhaps?

"Out here we don't need Google to tell us about the weather," Liberty chuckles. "We simply need to read the signs of the bush." He crouches beside a hole in the ground and beckons our small group closer. "Look carefully - you see how there is a hole within a hole? The ants know that rain is coming, and so they've protected the entrance to their nest by creating this larger hole and then excavating a ball around the inner hole, so that water is diverted around the ball and away from the entrance to their nest."

Before we reach the next big thorn tree Victor Nchindo Mujapilu, also our guide on the trail, quietly calls us over to a patch of clear earth. "I suspect this was an aardvark," he muses, pointing to a heap of disturbed sand before raking his fingers through it. "As soon as an aardvark defecates it will cover its droppings with soil, so that it cannot be tracked by predators." He continues to dig carefully. "Ah, there it is!"

He holds out a cluster of what looks like earth, only slightly darker than the surrounding soil. "Look carefully - can you see the remnants of ants in here?"

We walk on quietly, weaving around shrubs and clusters of wild sage and past corkwood trees, whose soft wood is often carved into souvenirs. We taste sweet berries, look nose-to-mandible at armoured ground crickets and, for a while, follow the trail of a leopard - female, Liberty said; he can tell from the tracks - before her footprints disappear into dense scrub.

When the team at Onguma conceived their new Trails Camp, a luxurious base for exploring the wilderness on foot, tuning deeply into details is exactly what they had in mind.

"Viewing animals up close while on a game drive is an incredible experience, but we also wanted to offer guests an opportunity to connect with the wild in a more intimate way," says Marelize Conradie, the general manager at Onguma. "We wanted guests to be able to appreciate the richness of silence combined with the thrill of the unknown, and to find the deep sense of peace that comes with being offline and stepping away from society."

Over a series of quiet walks through the wilderness and nights chatting around a campfire, time slows down. We learn how to find north by looking at the shape of termite mounds, and how to tell the difference between tracks left by a male kudu and a female kudu. We watch, from a few comfortable metres away, as seven giraffes browse the treetops and we walk - some more nervously than others - through the territory of a black rhino as we search for elephants. We learn how to solve stomach issues with sour plums, make soap from corkwood and that the fruit of the Makalani palm can be brewed into beer.

We never do cross paths with that lion - not while on foot, anyway - nor do we see a leopard. But in letting go - of time, of certainty, of the need to see it all - we find something quieter, something deeper and altogether wilder: a reconnection not just with nature, but with a more instinctive way of being.

The writer was a guest of Onguma.