The isolated baobab tree in the Limpopo province of South Africa soars 65ft above the savannah, has a girth double its height and could well be the world’s oldest tree.

It also has a fully licensed bar, room inside for about 50 customers and enough soundproofing in its thick trunk to absorb the screech of rock music, without disturbing the perfect peace of the bush outside.

By night the lights glowing from inside its immense bulk make the Big Baobab Pub appear magical. As you head towards the slim wooden side door, you half expect Frodo Baggins to be propping up the bar, nursing a tankard of mead, or Moon-Face, from Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree stories, to spring from the knotted branches.

Baobab trees look like nothing else: a fat conical trunk with bark like elephant hide bursts out of the ground and tapers upwards before splitting into a tangle of root-like branches, which give it the nickname “upside-down tree”.

After a thousand or so years of sucking moisture from the dry land and storing it in their trunks, the baobabs’ fibrous insides begin to hollow out. Some hollowed trees make for good hidey-holes but few are large enough to house a pub.

Doug and Heather Van Heerden have owned the land on which the Big Baobab Pub stands for 19 years and believe the tree is anything from 2,000 to 6,000 years old. They recently had it officially licensed — before that it was listed as a shebeen, a kind of speakeasy more often found in South Africa’s townships and poor rural villages.

Running a bar inside a living organism has its difficulties, not least that the baobab grows roots within its hollow body that reach down in search of water. But, as Doug says: “The roots grow down looking for water and all they find is beer.”

On the plus side the pub is set to keep growing, literally, as the tree continues to age and hollow.

The Big Baobab is more than 300 miles northeast of Johannesburg, near the remote hilltop home of the Modjadji, or Rain Queen, the hereditary head of the Balobedu tribe, and inspiration for H Rider Haggard’s 1887 novel She. It’s worth the trek.

Name Big Baobab Pub

Address Sunland Baobab Jungalows, Modjadjiskloof, Limpopo, South Africa Phone +27 15 309 9039

Proprietors Doug and Heather Van Heerden

Website www.bigbaobab.co.za

The time Any evening you show up The clientele South African quad bike enthusiasts, self-drive holidaymakers, thirsty lions

The drink Amarula, a creamy liqueur made from the pale yellow fruit of the marula tree

The opening lines “Steady on the rum, I don’t want to get out of my tree”, “Can I ride my quad bike back to the tent without getting breathalysed?”