The jeep leaves camp at 5:40. No small talk. The Mara in early April is not a place for words - the grass is still wet, the horizon a bruised pink, and the only honest response is to sit very still and watch.

By 6:15 we've found them: a coalition of three cheetahs, breathing visible in the cold, stretched out on a termite mound like they own the lease. They probably do.

“You do not come here to see animals. You come here to be reminded that you are one.”

Back at camp by ten. Eggs. A shower under the stars, somehow still warm from last night. The afternoons, we learned, are for reading. The Mara does its real work between five and nine.