The savannah burns and the Tsavo East is now an expanse of reddish ground with clumps of grass and dried trees.
Arid and dusty herbs moved by the wind that raises an impalpable veil that sits everywhere.
A cloud of dust blurs the rearview mirror, dust that settles just a few minutes after our passage: but how long does it rain in Tsavo?
Long months of drought, an endless season where the tropical sun warms and rains day after day a land that is now helpless and resigned. We turn off the engine of the machine to hear the savannah swallowing in agony and it seems to live inside it and share it with suffering.
We look around and hear "scratches in the heart".
But even so is a place that captures emotions, a communion with the warm and dusty scent of Africa with its immutable and sometimes harsh laws, immersed in an incredible and at the same wonderful time.
The red earth has dehydrated to such an extent that it transforms landscapes into beautiful watercolor paintings.
It will always be worth making a safari, even in these arid days, for the beauty of savannah wild and for its fantastic heroes.
We can define them as follows: heroes of survival.
They are the animals that have to adapt to live in the land that once, according to the seasons, was lush and there was water and food for everyone.
Now they flock around the remaining water puddles or in the vicinity of the Galana River where it sometimes runs like a lazy stream.
Elephants are scattered, slowed down by puppies: small family groups made up of a few females with elephants still breastfeeding, born in a few months.
Males, often lonely, seek nourishment by barking dry trees, females prefer to sometimes eradicate their rare paws of grass that lead to their mouth after shaking them with the proboscis from arid soil residues.
Everyone thinks of themselves and their small family.
Numerous groups, with no small followers, have long migrated to greener areas.
And those who remained have signs of poor nutrition on their forcibly disfigured body, but will not leave Tsavo until they even secrete the last pits. The yellow and dry grass is an excellent shelter for the lions that are perfectly camouflaged and wait for the herbivores that go to drink with ease, easy prey for a well-fed and well-fed crowd.
Everywhere you see bones scattered with devoutly devoured animals, nervous nuts that are attached to the savannah in search of some bites left, vultures on the trees awaiting their turn after hyenas have also benefited from it.
The carnivores are well-groomed, sleeping in the deep in the daytime, fresh and abundant meat sauces.
And each herd has its lively puppies and nothing to eat.
Then you walk miles and miles and the landscape is lunar: stones, spruce, sandy land and dry branches where even the birds dare not lie down.
And all over there is a blue sky covered with white clouds like whipped cream sprinkled.
The problem is very serious, and while water sources are not in desperate conditions, the concern focuses on food sources for herbivores, especially for elephants who have to take large amounts of food on a daily basis due to their size.
And now there is not enough of the commitment of environmentalists and conservationists: the weather forecasts do not promise anything good.
In the short sun and in the medium term still sun.
There are even those who anticipate the first rains towards the end of November, early December: a desperately endless time that will endure the whole park and its creatures.
We hope the experts are wrong.
It would not be the first time and we would be really happy.