To look at my camera roll from my week in Zambia with the Duchess of Edinburgh, you might assume that it was one long jolly. Here an elephant, there a waterfall, everywhere a police escort under a bright blue sky.
What I fail to capture in the pictures was the sheer hard work of it all.
I don't just mean me, although I did find myself filing a story at 1am, lathered from ankle to bald spot in DEET, amid a cloud of ravening mosquitoes risen from the Zambezi river.
I mean the tirelessness of a member of the royal family who can smile attentively throughout an exhaustive speech on Anglo-Zambian educational collaboration, dance with people saved from blindness and exchange quips with Zambia's president about the benefits of having zebras in one's back garden.
© Jack MalvernZebras and lychee juice with the President
Our visit to the private residence of the most powerful man in Zambia is an early highlight.
We speed through Lusaka, blue lights pulsing at each end of our convoy, along streets lined with jacaranda trees purple with blossom.
My minibus, containing the Press Association photographer Jane Barlow and a member of Buckingham Palace staff, turns into Hakainde Hichilema's driveway and past soldiers armed with a truck-mounted machine gun.
"Are those zebras?" I ask. They are, six in all. They munch on the president's lawn and drink from an ornamental fountain.
© PA Images via Getty ImagesI have done a royal overseas trip before, watching the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (now the Prince and Princess of Wales) from behind a cordon in a UN warehouse in Copenhagen. We were so far apart that I couldn't reliably have hit them with a bread roll.
At the president's house, I follow Sophie through the front door, into the living room and stand nearby as the head of state proudly shows off a photograph of himself with King Charles, blown up to the size of a film poster.
I am ushered onto the verandah to drink lychee juice while Sophie and the president speak inside, but it is obvious that the two get on terrifically. When they emerge, after an hour, for a photo, she remarks that the zebras are "good lawnmowers".
"Yes," he replies. "And good fertilizers."
I step around a pile of freshly deposited manure.
© Jack MalvernThe next day, I arrive at Sophie's hotel and get a royal "good morning" before the convoy sets off for Lusaka airport. We are shown to the VIP lounge to wait for our 12-seater aircraft. At last, I think as I open the door to the VIP gents, I can see what life is like on the other side of the velvet rope. It is a strictly functional row of lavatories that might have been in a provincial community centre. Still, the wall-mounted soap dispenser is filled.
On the tarmac awaits our Cessna Grand Caravan, "the Land Cruiser of the sky", where I sit three rows behind Sophie. The cabin is so small that the pilot delivers her safety briefing by turning round in her seat. I eye up my sick bag, meaningfully. The policeman in the seat across the aisle fits himself in by putting his arm across the back of my seat. I feel very protected.
This is the first of two internal flights, in and out of the Zambian bush. On the second, I act as an air steward after finding a cool box filled with cartons of mango juice, which I recommend to the cabin. Everyone chooses water.
We land at the Royal Airstrip (named after the nearby Royal Zambezi Lodge rather than actual royalty), where the arrivals lounge is an open-sided shack with a desk under it.
© Jack MalvernAfter engagements about empowering women in Zambian wildlife protection and a demonstration by a sniffer dog named Kalo about how to find a bag of illicit pangolin scales, Sophie boards a boat on the Zambezi. Jane, the photographer, and I follow in a second boat along with a handful of aides. We are offered lifejackets. We conclude that crocodiles would probably get us first, and soon pass some, basking on a mudbank.
The Duchess is animated, when we catch her up. She points out elephants on the river bank.
"A herd!" she hisses, enthusiastically.
Jane wants to get a shot of Sophie with elephants in the background. The photographer is wary of telling a royal family member what to do, but the Duchess is happy to take direction and Jane gets the shot: Sophie looking delighted as a wonder of nature flaps his ears behind her, easily close enough to hit her with a bread roll.
After seeing pods of hippos and a group of buffalo, we land to find a Duchess bright with excitement. She tells us how she has at last caught up with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, and their son, James, Earl of Wessex, by seeing more than one elephant at once. Years ago, they had seen a herd on a safari that she had been obliged to miss.
When Sophie asked James what he had seen, he played down his experience. He replied, diffidently: "Some elephants."
We climb into high-sided vehicles for the second part of our safari. Baboons appear, then a pride of lions. They lie in the dust like a family after Christmas dinner. We are awed by their majesty. One of them gets up to poo.
A short drive later, we stop to get out, watching the sun turn red at the horizon. I take a Coke from the cool box. Sophie admires a termite mound. Hippos grunt from the river. It has been a good day.
© Jack MalvernI file my story that evening from a shelter a bus-length or two from Sophie's tent. We have been warned that elephants and hippos routinely wander through the camp at night and there is a rasping sound of vegetation being torn. I stare into the darkness. Nothing. I file at 1am and go to my bunk bed in a brick building that looks more elephant-proof than where the Duchess is sleeping.
Eye-to-eye with a hippo
At 2am, I learn the next morning, a hippo appears outside Sophie's tent. The Duchess wakes to the sound of munching and moves her bedsheet to get a better look. The rustle disturbs the hippo. It locks eyes with HRH. Sophie thinks she is near enough.
The Duchess tells the story at breakfast. How close were they? She points out the chair next to the entrance to her tent. The hippo wouldn't have been any closer if it had been sitting in the chair, she says.
© Jack MalvernMischievous monkeys and royal netball
We fly to Livingstone and are greeted at the airport exit by dancers. It is a traditional welcome and this one is particularly exuberant. The lead dancer, with large shoulder decorations, drops to his hands and knees and shimmies like an angry porcupine.
On the way to the Mosi oa Tunya, as Victoria Falls is known, there is some debate about the right word for "welcome" in the local language, Tonga, one of 72 languages spoken in Zambia. Two speakers cannot agree on which of the hundred words is the right one. They settle on "mufitile".
An unusual feature of the memorial service at the cenotaph next to Victoria Falls is the monkeys, who observe the two-minute silence but cannot refrain from grooming one another and nibbling their own feet. Sophie lays a posy with a handwritten card that reads: "Lest we forget."
I wonder if the monkeys will make off with the flowers.
"They are likely to," a local tour guide says. "They take anything they want."
The falls are less thunderous than in peak season in July, but leave Sophie in wonderment nonetheless. The reduced flow means that she is able to decline an offer of "a brolly or a hat".
© Jack MalvernThe schoolchildren at Maramba Primary School in Livingstone are practising their drumming and football when we hear that Sophie is five minutes away. "That's five British minutes, not Zambian minutes," says the local representative of Sport in Action. The charity organises sporting activities for schoolchildren and gives them access to education and life skills.
A local worker explains that "now" has a different meaning in Zambia. If you tell a friend that you are coming to meet them "now", you have just got out of the shower. "Now now" means you are in the taxi. "Now now now" means you are just arriving.
Sophie asks to have a go at shooting for the hoop on the netball field. I root for her, but each of her five attempts are near-misses. The photos make it look like success, however.
© Jack MalvernSophie's most profound moment is on the last day. Beneath the shade of a tree at Mukuni Rural Health Centre, she meets six people who would now be blind if they hadn't received treatment for trachoma. The British charity Sightsavers has worked with the Zambian government to treat the disease, which causes eyelashes to grow inwards.
After telling their stories, the jubilant patients spontaneously begin clapping and dancing while chanting: "We are happy, because now we can see."
I watch as Sophie joins the dance, taking the patients' hands. One of the women has told us that she went from being unable to see to do her housework to getting married and having two children. Her youngest, aged six months, looks at me with wide eyes.
Royal marriage advice and a red-dust farewell
Our last engagement is at the Wayi Wayi studio, an art gallery and workshop run by the charismatic husband-and-wife artists, Lawrence and Agness Buya Yombwe. They demonstrate the "dialogue dynamic pot", a knobbly vessel with two spouts. Lawrence and Agness blow into it separately, then together, demonstrating the futility of a married couple both trying to speak at the same time.
Sophie is taken by this. "Actually, I think my husband might want one of these," she says.
Suddenly, for the first time since I arrive, I am no longer in the convoy. Sophie waves at me as her car drives away, royal standard flapping on its bonnet. I sit by the side of the road as the red dust settles. It is time, at last, to go home.
