DUST-laced, heat-smudged, sun-fired; that is the Zimbab-wean horizon. Dawn-embraced, addle-sore, lion-loved; that is the African Encounter survivor.

　　Yes, lion-loved. Perhaps alternatively interpreted as, lion-mauled, scratched, or pounced. But for those in the know, it is the leading love-bite, the ultimate acceptance, the greatest and hopefully painlessly-scarring compliment. It is the jewel of a much-maligned Zimbabwe. It is Antelope Park, Gweru. It is Walking with Lions.

　　"Where else in the world..." asks the ranch welcome mat proudly. Where else indeed, gasp the glowing visitors wonderingly.

　　All this is a far cry from the glass and steel horizon of Shanghai, and not everyone's idea of a treat. But from the moment I stumbled across the bewitching website (travellersworldwide.co.uk) "Walking with Lions" was the ever-returning specter haunting my thoughts.

　　Antelope Park, a 3,000-acre Zimbabwean Game Reserve, offers a superlative-defying tourist opportunity serving a serious conservational purpose. Uncontrolled hunting, diminishing natural habitats and diseases like feline immunodeficiency virus mean that the wild lion may be entirely lost from the continent in the next decade. Striving to avert such an event, Andrew and Wendy Connelly have worked determinedly since 1987 to establish Antelope Park as a pioneering lion-breeding facility. Their efforts are invaluable to the World Wildlife Fund's urgent drive to re-introduce a quality gene pool of lions to the wild. It is a project funded entirely by the Park's tourist attractions, with the "cub loving" headlining the activity listings.

　　Tourist-accompanied walk

　　I arrived at this remarkable camp, not a little tired, not a little overwhelmed by the African beauty around me, as inadequate an expression as any cliche. The camp itself is comprised of thatched African lodges, set upon the shores of "the world's only circular river", (wink-wink) with every modern convenience tactfully woven into the sweeping landscape. The camp oozes Africa, it radiates cultural authenticity. It employs hundreds of members of the local community, weaving their own mohair products from the park goat herds, crafting all furniture and accommodation at the workshop, cultivating crops, and affording the camp a virtual self-sufficiency, of which the ever-welcoming staff are fiercely proud.

　　The centre piece - an open-sided, thatch-roofed dining area - fits comfortably into the tranquility of the bush backdrop. Rolling away from your early morning coffee is an Eden of giraffe, zebra and wildebeest. Underscoring your parched-afternoon Cola - Obey Your Thirst - throbs the call of the African fish eagle; "the sound of Africa." Low-lighting your evening meal, the flickering campfire and soft-glowing night sky. Here, the stars really twinkle, the moon really smiles. And people really are beautiful. Over 250 international travellers come to Antelope Park every month, mixing indiscriminately with one-day-ago-strangers, forming warm one-evening-friendships, offering guitar led sing-alongs to the night cacophony of frogs, bats and bugs. Together they recount stories of the day's equine adventures, canoeing incidents, elephant-back swims, game-drives, and, most importantly, "cub loving."

　　Perhaps "cub" is an initially misleading term. Banish all kitten-sized images immediately; on my first day at Antelope Park, three "cub" went AWOL from their tourist-accompanied walk, and took down a large donkey. Bad news for the donkey, but enormously rewarding for the project directors. For the rehabilitation process aims to introduce these semi-tame walking lions to a large reserve in Zambia by the middle of 2005, where, it is hoped, they will be able to fend for themselves and have cubs of their own, genetically strong and confident in all the skills of the bush. Their cubs will be chipped and released into the wild-proper, where they will be monitored but left free from human contact to reclaim the birthrights of their ancestors. A successful donkey hunt takes the park's current walking cubs one step closer to that Zambian reserve.

　　Tourists crash helpfully into the picture for cub walking, an exercise that encourages the cubs to develop survival instincts in the bush. At 15 months, the cubs are retired from tourist walks as Jo P's safety becomes increasingly dubious. And believe me, lion cubs are immensely affectionate creatures, to whom social bonding is of elementary importance. Once their trust is gained, you are warmly welcomed as a member of their pride, but they can also be staggeringly "naughty." Social acceptance is all about interaction; namely grooming, stalking, pouncing and play fighting, with much pawing, clawing and chewing along the way. For better or worse, their faces are hopelessly expressive, and one quickly becomes acquainted with "the naughty look" that dances into their exquisite, hypnotic eyes.

　　If those exquisite, hypnotic eyes are trained on yours, with four, or eight, or even 12, giant paws soft-pad-padding towards you, you know you're about to receive tooth-articulated feline adoration. Love really does hurt. Yet, with gleaming eye and terror-perfumed enthusiasm, (most) lion walking novices will breathlessly insist "Cub love!? Cub love!" even as a 350 lb "cub" bounds toward them, ("that naughty look" leading) tumbling the blissfully-fear-frozen individual in the name of affection.

　　Cub loving

　　A guide like Bobby, Antelope Park's cheeky and frequent swoon-inducing - so I've been told - head guide, has known the cubs from three weeks old. He can do anything with them - lift them, cuddle them, trip them - and they, being dragged, rolled and pounced by the undisputed man-king of the beasts, simply gaze back.

　　At times his guidance is invaluable; "You shouldn't try and copy everything you see the guides do," he suggests, pushing his whole hand into Luke's 11-month-old, needle-sharp-tooth-peppered mouth and drawing forth the great adoring, feline-pink tongue. "Don't get eaten," he advises, eyes shining with as much of "that naughty look" as any of his cubs might radiate in an entire walk of love-loaded incidents. Yet watching the lions respond to the guides is a humbling experience.

　　Of course, it isn't all glamour. Poachers have to be fought; two-hour snare-sweeps are exhausting in the angry kisses of mid-afternoon sunshine. Cubs must be fed; usually with grisly, less-than-fresh hunks of meat and bone. Enclosures need to be cleaned; all that green, antelope meat has to go somewhere, in all its pungent glory. Cubs get sick; as I write, my favourite cubs, Bill and Ben, fast going blind, barely able to walk due to a rare disorder, are waiting to be put down at just 10 months old. Cute cubs are also dangerous killers; the park owner, Andrew Connelly, breezes around camp with one arm and an empty sleeve.

　　But then, who can remain unmoved by those crimson tear-streaked sunset, or untouched by the enthusiasm of the Eds and the Andys, that guide in the park? Is it possible to forget the swift bubbling joy of galloping through the bush, bare-back and out of control around thorn trees like bending poles, or giggling lazily around a midnight-blue campfire? It is impossible not to eulogize that first cub-love moment. Every cub-love moment. And no-one who has experienced Antelope Park can argue with the guest-book tributes; "The walk with the lions was the highlight of my entire life!"

　　By Natalie Hunt