Tranquility

I love this picture. I keep it in a special place on my desktop and, every now and again, particularly if I feel a little low, I open it and think to myself, "You were there. That was you, all those years ago, standing in a little house built of a mangrove pole structure clad with palm fronds, looking out across a veranda to a coral reef and the blue distance of the Indian Ocean. That was you. It was wonderful but it couldn't last."

We went to Lazy Lagoon twice, in 2010 and 2012. The small hotel was built on a peninsula to the north of Dar-es-Salaam, and each time we visited it was our first stop on safaris which took us to two other camps.

Lazy Lagoon was the ideal place to start an expedition. A couple of hours drive from Dar, it was the perfect environment in which to wind down after the flight from the UK, to refresh ourselves, to relax, to let the warm winds envelop us, to adjust to the slow beat of African time.

The picture was taken in the enervating heat of midday. The screech of the crickets vied with the soft splash of the waves on the beach. We'd just had lunch, it was siesta time, but I couldn't waste precious minutes of a holiday which was already far too short, a holiday which, given the option, I would have loved to live for the rest of time.

So I picked up my camera and took a photograph.