This scene has been played out thousands of times under the gaze of Mount Kilimanjaro, but each lake crossing is different as the elephant groups will never repeat the same line up and the cloud patterns around the grand old volcano are never the same twice. So, each crossing of the dry lake of Amboseli is different.

This photograph has a clean simplicity and I like it as it reminds me what a spectacular place Amboseli can be. For many months over the last two years, the elephants have not crossed the lake as it has either been flooded or the ground has been too wet for an elephant to walk on. We have waited and waited for the arena to become dry and dusty again - that is how we know and like it. By late August 2019, normal service was resuming.

To my knowledge, there is no other ecosystem now in which the weather and animal behaviour are less predictable than in Amboseli, which is why moments such as this are to be treasured.