Although laikipiacounty in the Kenyan highlands is just a few miles north of the equator, the early-morning air is cool and tangy.
When the sun reaches its zenith, shining brightly in arching, china-blue skies daubed with high, scudding clouds, there is a clarity to the light that makes it possible to see over great distances, and in incredible detail.
The views from here, on the western reaches of the 32,000-acre Borana Conservancy, are of seasonal river valleys, coated in acacia and wild olive trees, across naked savannah and rolling foothills, to magnificent Mount Kenya, etched on the horizon like an engraving.
The owner of this extraordinary house, who prefers to remain nameless, says he first came to Laikipia because the landscape reminded him of his childhood home in central Nigeria, where his English mother, a chemistry teacher, and Nigerian father, a lawyer, raised him and his two sisters.
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