'The beauty of the desert in Namibia took my breath away' Jenny Zarins, photographer

Our series on captivating travel photos continues with Jenny Zarins’s image from a horse-riding safari in the Namib desert

This photograph, taken in the Namib desert in 2018, captures a sense of freedom for me, that feeling of vastness we get from spending extended time in the wild. I was on a horse-riding safari: 11 days of being outside all day and sleeping beneath the stars. We covered 300km; it was extraordinary.

I’d never been to Namibia and although I’d been told about the breathtaking landscape, it still did exactly that … took my breath away. You think of riding through the desert and imagine it will be all sand – but every day the scenery was so diverse – from the plains along the edge of the Namib sand sea in Sossusvlei to mountains and the dramatic, deep Kuiseb Canyon and Gaub Pass. We rode through the Welwitschia plains, Moon valley and along the Swakop River.