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We are standing, quietly, no more than a few metres from a pair of young cheetahs.
Our experienced guide softly tells our small group to stand together to one side and not spread out or appear to surround them.
One of the cheetahs yawns lazily.
The other glances in our direction but pays us very little attention.
Nothing except grass, scrub, sand and fresh air separates us, and yet the earth's fastest animal over land merely observes us with apparent indifference while we take our photographs and savour this extraordinary moment.
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We are at Okonjima in the Waterberg region of central Namibia, home to the AfriCat Foundation, a non-profit organisation committed to the long-term conservation of Namibia's large carnivores.
Set in a 200 square kilometre nature reserve, AfriCat provides a safe haven for large cats, many orphaned at a young age, to develop and hone their hunting skills and learn to become self-sustaining, which gives them the opportunity to return to their natural environment.
The cheetahs we are observing are young, about three years old, and are wearing collars with radio-tracking devices attached, which has enabled us to locate them in the reserve from our open jeep, before setting out on foot to see them at close quarters.
Not all the cheetahs in AfriCat's care can be approached on foot and some will never be able to be released back into the wild. But the foundation strives to rehabilitate those cheetahs that have a chance of returning to the wild and surviving on their own.
Our guide, Previous ("like yesterday, the previous day," he joked when he introduced himself) knows these cats and their behaviours well. We feel completely safe in his hands as we leave our jeep, and follow the low-level beeping of the tracking device, and head into the scrub to see what it has found.
When the signal gets strong he turns off the device and we walk slowly and quietly in single file to a small clearing, where our two cheetahs lie together beneath a tree.
Previous sits down in the sand and we gather behind him to photograph the cats and observe them for about ten minutes, before one cheetah gets to his feet and wanders off, followed a minute or two later by his companion.
We all head back to our jeep, slightly bemused that we are sharing this territory, on foot, with a couple of very big cats.
On the way back to our lodge, via a very scenic spot to enjoy the sunset and a gin and tonic, the jeep is filled with the sound of electronic beeps as all nine of us flip through our photographs and compare shots. But the best images of all are the ones etched indelibly on our memories.