I was eight when I watched The Lion King.

It was, by far, the most happening day in an eight-year-old life. I laughed, sang and cried with Simba. I hadn’t seen anything like The Circle of Life, which was all about Africa’s wilderness. Plains, grasslands, rivers, and forests.

And its wildlife.

One image stayed with me on the way back home—a snow-capped mountain, with elephants marching at its base. Was this place even real?

Since then, “Africa” became, in my mind, a place where wildlife could be seen in the hundreds, wherever one looked. I wasn’t sure if it was a country, a city, or a zoo. I don’t think I knew what a continent was. 

But I knew Africa. I wanted to go there. To the rocky outcrop where Simba’s pride lived. To the elephant graveyard. To the dry riverbed the wildebeest crossed.

But most of all, to that mountain.

So the next day, I went. I don’t think I’ve returned from that trip.

In another world, the one where we have to consider visas, flights, exchange rates, and leave-balances before we travel, I made it there for my fortieth birthday. I met my eight-year-old self there. By then, I had learnt that the mountain was Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, seen from Amboseli in Kenya. 

Amboseli is a dry grassland with swamps that draw water from the mountain’s melting ice, holding life through most of the year, where I was lucky enough to see elephant herds march below a snow-capped mountain.