The fall of Pride rock
- chet kamat
- Dec 12, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 8
The Lion King, arguably the most well known animated film in the world, centres around a pride of lions ruling over the animal kingdom from Pride Rock.
This rock is also the scene of the most memorable moments from the film where a newly born lion cub, Simba is presented to the gathering animals.
This particular rock is distinctive because of the way it juts out, in a cantilevered fashion.
We have a cluster of rocks & boulders, on the north eastern end of our plot. This is also, the highest point of the site and standing on one of the rocks provides a bird's eye view of the plot and its surroundings. Seeing us stand on this rock, one of the architects jokingly called it the Simba rock, referring to the movie.
This is a granite boulder, about 40-45 tons in weight and approx 15 feet in length (see circled ~ 6 feet human, in the accompanying image for scale). A couple of weeks ago, I discussed with the team, the possibility of having the rock appear to jut out, by removing some of the earth below it (see yellow hatched area in the image). We were not sure of the stability of the rock and the underlying soil, but decided it would be worth an attempt.
This month, I'm spending a fortnight in Masai Mara on safari; taking advantage of a lull in the pandemic to get a breather. I had left my campsite at 5:45 am - the plan today was to locate the Sopa pride of lions and make some images in the morning light.
After an extended search, we had finally spotted the pride. They were sitting in a meadow - three adult females and six cubs of varying ages were relaxing in the soft light of dawn in the savannah. I was enjoying the moment - the cool breeze before the sun climbs up the horizon, the pastoral scene of this well fed pride lounging in the grassy meadow. One of the young male cubs looked very photogenic, his still to be developed, mane was getting ruffled in the breeze and I shot off a few frames, while soaking in the beauty of nature.
Time flies when one is in the wild, and my normal preoccupation with work or home goals fades into nothingness. Mara being a grassland, has relatively good wifi connectivity all over the game reserve. While I was enjoying this momentary, happy fugue state, a WhatsApp ping brought me back to the present. It was a series of photographs and a brief message. I recollected that our architect had arranged a team to clear the soil around the north eastern rock cluster and in particular the soil under the front of Simba rock. I was keen for the files to download to see the result of their work. However, our fears regarding the instability of the rock had come true - in the process of our soil clearing activity, Simba Rock had slid and fallen to the ground.
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