"Leave behind your home turf and saddle up for an overseas adventure. Nervous horseman JEREMY LAZELL gallops off into South Africa's Lapalala Reserve, while opposite, equestrian experts nominate the world's 10 best rides."

There is something distinctly unnerving about receiving three phone calls in the week before your maiden trail ride inquiring as to the general level of your horsemanship on the basis that you'll be riding for 8 days through " black rhino country". This however, is nothing compared to the moment during breakfast on day one when you discover that you alone have seen fit to eschew jodphurs in favour of £ 3.00 Mister Byrite trakkie bottoms, and that you alone have nothing to add to an unfathomable debate over the relative merits of Stubbens and dressage saddles. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I am back in the play ground on my first day of school, and while nobody is picking on me as yet, just wait till they get a load of my rising trot.

I am introduced to my horse, Kafue, drawing tenuous comfort from the fact that he is the only "grey" in the yard - marked therefore, through the twisted logic of my anxious mind, as uniquely wise, understanding and above all, slow. Kafue, like the others, is a Boerperd, descended from the horses used against the Queen's forces in the Boer War, and bred, I am relieved to read, for their gentle disposition and sure-footedness over rough terrain. Even so, Nancy from Connecticut tells me over breakfast that the first moments are crucial: show him who is boss or there will be hell to pay. Nervously I sidle up to Kafue and massage his chest with the ends of my fingers. I just don't think he will buy the tough-cop stuff from me: instead I am going for bribes.

We set off into the bush, eight paying customers and two guides, across the 40 000 hectares of reclaimed farmland that make up the Lapalala Reserve. Denis, from Cape Town is joking with Wendy, our guide - something about Churchill's take on horses: " Dangerous at both ends, uncomfortable in the middle". Nancy and her pal Astrid are high-fiving across the space between their mounts - " Back in Africa, we made it!" - and everyone, even the horses who are dancing jauntily down the red-earth road, appears happy about life and genuinely indifferent to the spectre of rhino charges and spinal injury units. Wendy spots a Hornbill, which we stop to ogle, then a small family of Kudu, which we follow quietly into the bush, but throughout all this I am distracted, disengaged, in thrall somehow to a bigger, more significant encounter - the first canter.

It's not that I haven't cantered before - it's just that when I last did so, on a brush-up hack across a Surrey common a few days before coming to South Africa, I managed only about half a minute, the first second of which I spent losing my stirrups and the 29 that followed wondering which side I was destined to fall. In the end it was the right side, which was the wrong side as far as my confidence was concerned; so that now, when Wendy turns and tells us that we are going to canter, it is several moments before I remember to draw breath.

Kafue breaks almost immediately from walk to canter, and I am up, standing in my stirrups as instructed by Wendy, and, from nowhere, Kafue and I are as one, noiselessly, fluidly, Grand Nationally flying down a red-dirt track between camel thorns and acacias. It is totally absorbing: the movement; the speed; the concentrated effort to stay balanced; the feeling, most of all, of never wanting it to stop. Eventually it does, Wendy signalling a halt, and Kafue easing seamlessly to a walk.

We ride for about 40km, interrupted pleasantly now and then with fleeting glimpses of zebra and eland, impala and warthog: it is hardly the Africa of the serried-ranks -of-migrating-wildebeest variety, or at least if it is, the almost ubiquitous covering of indigenous scrub makes it nigh-on-impossible to tell. Not that I mind: on the contrary, there is something refreshingly boy-scoutish about having to rely on leopard spoor and aardvark holes for one's game thrills.

We reach our fly-camp moments before sunset, handing over the horses to the grooms. I'd feel guilty about this were it not for the fact that there are the beginnings of a campfire, a cool box of Castle Lager and a bowl of biltong competing for my conscience. Others shower, then join me. An incredible three-course dinner follows; the workings of the Southern Cross are given an inevitable airing; and, in between the odd jackal call and a moment of magic when a porcupine bustles into camp then disappears off towards the shower tent, Denis announces with customary pomp that "this is all most acceptable" - at which point an irritating little voice in my head chirrups on about tempting fate. That night I wake up twice as the Kafue of my dreams nibbles more and more aggressively at my cheek. What on earth will it take to stop being so afraid?

The answer, ironically, is the very thing Wendy has tried so carefully to protect us from. It is the afternoon of day 5 and we have just finished cantering alongside a herd of Red hartebeest, hooves kicking, smiles widening. Denis is quoting Churchill again: Something about the outside of a horse being good for the inside of a man, while elsewhere along the line people are laughing, chatting, joking. We are only a few kilometers from camp, walking along a sandy road, another gorgeous day is done. I am not sure which of these I register next: a rasping snort, a violent clatter in the bushes to the left, Wendy turning her horse and shouting " Go! Go!", or the sight of more than a tonne and close to 40kph worth of black rhino bearing down on the horses in front. I remember turning Kafue and just pleading with him to go, too mindful of the impending bolt to risk removing my legs from his flanks and launching a well-aimed kick. It seems to take forever to be off - "Come on Kafue" - but suddenly we are away: Kafue, Zambezi, Caprivi, all galloping as one, all terrified as one, rider and horse. It is the most intensely alive I think I have ever felt.

We pull up a good 200 meters down the track, the rhino gone, the danger past, Wendy shrieking at us to pull up before someone ends up wearing a camel-thorn tree on their head, and then we just laugh - laughing at the sheer exhilaration of what we've been through, and in my case at least, laughing with simple relief: no more rampaging Kafue's of the night. From now on it would all be "most acceptable".

The World's Best Trails

The panel of experts:

John Ruler - joint author of "Great Riding Holidays" and editor of www.rideworldwide.co.uk
Arnold Garvey - editor of the country-sports magazine Horse & Hound.
Jasper Winn - a riding journalist, and horse-breaker, who has worked extensively abroad.

Equus Wilderness Safari - South Africa

What's the attraction?
Simple, rustic luxury - no electricity, no phones (mobiles are banned) - through a private reserve stocked with game. Experienced guides with a love of the bush allow opportunities to approach endangered black and white rhino. Hardy forward-going Boerperds, easy to canter, easy to control, while custom-made, western style saddles make for a comfortable 8 day trail ride. Accommodation is in classic safari tented "fly-camps" in the bush and elegant lodges.

What's the standard?
Riders should be competent, and able to canter safely.

What the experts say: "Wonderful horses and the best place in Africa for rhino." - Garvey