Within the first two hours, Aryan had filled four pages of his journal. He could barely write fast enough.
Giraffes — a tower of seven!
They walked slowly beside the jeep, so close Aryan could see their long black tongues curling around the thorny acacia branches. "They eat thorns?" he gasped. Samuel smiled: "The thorns don't bother them one bit."
A sea of zebras
Hundreds of them, striped like living puzzles, moving in a great flowing herd across the plain. Samuel explained that no two zebras have exactly the same pattern — like fingerprints. Mama Priya said that was her favourite fact of the whole trip. Aryan wrote it down twice.
The elephant family
A mother elephant, two teenagers, and a tiny baby who kept tripping over its own trunk. "How old is the baby?" Aryan asked. "Three months," said Samuel. The whole family — all three of them — said "Awwww" at the same time.
Papa Rajan, who worked as an accountant and usually talked about spreadsheets at dinner, had gone completely quiet in the best possible way. He was turning his head slowly left and right, taking it all in with wide, bright eyes, like a child at a magic show. Priya noticed and nudged him."You look ten years old right now,"she whispered.
He grinned and didn't deny it.