'In my opinion bongo are the most beautiful of all the antelopes in Africa. Like so many forest animals in the Congo, bongo are red coloured, and being a member of the genus Tragelaphus (kudu, eland, bushbuck, nyala and sitatunga) they have a fine pedigree when it comes to aesthetic looks - stripes and lyre shaped horns. The fact that bongo antelope are so secretive and rarely seen in the wild also ads greatly to its mystique. We spent months walking long distances through the rainforest in search of bongo. It is the ultimate mystery animal! I have made several long, arduous expeditions to bongo habitat in the heart of the Congolese rainforest tracts in Gabon, C.A.R and Congo Brazzaville and only came across them on six occasions. One of those occasions gave me the opportunity to have a good look at this magnificent animal. Unlike all the other times (which had been just brief glimpses of bongo) on this occasion I watched two bongo males for about 40 minutes while the moved about in some dense undergrowth close to where I was seated on a log at the side of a path. Eventually they sensed that something was not right and bolted off in the opposite direction. I had been very lucky as they had moved in and out of small shafts of sunlight that penetrated through the trees above. The strangest part of all this was that I was within earshot of our forest encampment which lay 300 metres through the forest behind me. In the far distance I could hear our porters chattering as well. Yet this was how I had my best bongo sighting ever. '

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