She ate ostrich, encountered a wild lion and spent eight days in a saddle in one of the most untamed places on Earth.
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And despite the experience being scary in parts and tremendously physically taxing, Camille Kennedy says her adventure has inspired her to continue looking at life and the world differently to how she did before.
Her destination: Africa.
Her mode of transport: Horseback.
“It was just incredible; I’d always wanted to see the big animals in their natural habitat and getting to do it on horseback and getting so close to them and just being out in the wild with no cars, no people, was just amazing,” Camille said.
“(I thought I would) do it now before I get too old, while I’m young enough and can be fit enough and ride fast away from the lions if needed.”
As it turns out, she did find herself right next to a lion.
“In the Botswana camp we stayed in, there were two young male lions that would prowl around at night, so you’d be lying in your bed in the canvas tent, with these two lions prowling around outside making their booming noise all night,” Camille said.
“We decided we were going to go and find this lion the next morning ... so we’re riding through these bushes ... and I’m thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, what are we doing?’ I’m on a horse in scrub and I can’t see anything and we’re looking for a lion and then it was right in the scrub next to us.”
She said the lion watched them quietly, statue-like from the bush, but ran away once the group turned around.
So while she did not need the riding fitness to flee from a lion after all, there were other tense moments when skilled horsemanship had the potential to come in handy.
“We came across a young bull elephant at one point in Botswana and he was being quite threatening towards us,” Camille said.
“So we had to stop. We had one guide at the front and one at the back. It’s the guide at the front’s job to save everyone and the guide at the back will back him up, but get us away if there’s a threat.”
The guides were armed modestly with bull whips, not tranquilisers, which took Camille and her fellow travellers a little while to get comfortable with.
Her adventure lasted seven nights and eight days in Africa, including four nights in South Africa and three in Botswana in mid-2024.
The group of horse riders was small, consisting of seven women, with two sets of sisters among them, from different corners of the world, including Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
It was not a women-specific trip, but Camille says it’s predominantly women who sign up for these kinds of adventures.
“I’m part of a community that shares a lot of their experiences online and I have yet to see a man pop up actually,” she said.
Their lodgings were safari-style tents with decks looking over vast savannas.
Typically the camps were made under big mashatu (Nyala berry) trees, which attracted many monkeys.
“One of the camps in Botswana was a treetop camp; it was incredible,” Camille recalled.
The group would spend up to five and a half hours in their saddles each day, riding out for three hours after breakfast before returning to camp for lunch and then heading back out to explore in the afternoon in 30ºC temperatures.
Camille said the trip was geared towards intermediate to experienced riders who could handle galloping up out of the saddle most of the day, with the ability and energy to be able to turn and gallop away if there was a threat.
Though she’s ridden horses her whole life, she trained specifically for this trip for about a year prior because she wasn’t that kind of “riding fit”.
“I go for a bit of a plod here and there and don’t do anything too intense, so I was doing reformer pilates and a lot of full-day rides with some operators around Victoria,” Camille said.
“I was trying to just get that fitness and that session riding in and get used to it so I wouldn’t be too sore during the trip.
“I think I got to about day six (of the trip) before I started feeling it.”
Luckily, she didn’t have to carry much on her when she was on horseback.
She’d head out with just snacks, her phone and a GoPro action camera to capture the unique wildlife.
The giraffes were her favourite.
“Watching them run is like they’re in slow motion, it’s just so incredible, they’re just so graceful,” Camille said.
Thankfully, they weren’t on the menu like several other animals she witnessed throughout the days.
“The food was great, but it did feel at times like we’d see a wild animal and then eat it that night,” she said.
“Eland, a type of antelope, ostrich, all kinds of things.”
Though there were slightly unsettling moments, Camille was in her element on horseback.
She didn’t want that part of her trip to end.
“I knew I was travelling afterwards, but I knew it wasn’t going to compare to this, sitting in a vehicle going through national parks,” she said.
“And I thought, if this is how it ends, I’m doing something I love, pretty good thing on the headstone.”
Since her African adventure, Camille joined an eight-day New Year’s Eve ride in Kosciuszko National Park with Australian Safaris to see in 2025.
“It was amazing to see the brumbies up there and just the wild, and again, so secluded and no people or structures or anything, just nature, so it was incredible,” Camille said.
“And last year I took myself to Canada ... and did a lot of different rides around the Rockies and Kananaskis (Range) area and a few other places.”
Preferring to travel solo and meet with different groups, Camille says horse-riding themed holidays are the only way she wants to travel moving forward.
“It’s just a different level,” she said of her African adventure in particular.
“It was scary, it was a challenge, it was just really putting myself out there as a horse rider, really throwing yourself in the deep end.
“The fact that I was able to keep up and do it all and not have any injuries or anything crazy happen, it was just really rewarding and inspired myself to just keep going, keep riding and keep doing these sort of things to see life in a different way, see the world in a different way.”
You can hear Camille talk about her African horseriding trip on our Roam if you want to podcast here or on Spotify here.