A LITTLE HARMLESS ADVENTURE was exactly what we had signed on for: a two-week, no-frills family safari to Kenya last August that Amyas and I hoped would allow our children to interact with wild animals in ways more profound than staring at them through a zoo enclosure. The girls are more knowledgeable about Africa than the average American kid, since their father has been obsessed with the place since childhood. He traveled the continent after college and worked as a safari guide in Botswana. Then he parlayed his knowledge of the bush, as well as of Africa's arts and cultures, into a career as a dealer of African art in New York. After honeymooning in Tanzania and Zanzibar, we visited Africa a few more times before becoming parents. Now that the girls were seven and nine, we figured the time was ripe to take them on their first safari.

Kenya was a logical choice, since neither Amyas nor I had been there—but we didn't want a luxury safari with Out of Africa trimmings. After some guidebook and online research, we found affordable, Nairobi-based Kenia Tours and Safaris. Amyas and I told

The girls started counting the animals but soon gave up, happier just to count the different species—long-lashed giraffes, a pack of baboons, and massive Cape buffalo, their horns the shape of a fifties bob.

owner Ashvin Bhatt where we wished to go, and that we wanted to travel on our own, not with a group. He obligingly worked with us to design an itinerary. "You're going on a rough-and-tumble camping safari. No electricity, no TV, just 24-hour nature network," he said during our pre-safari briefing in Nairobi.

The trip began in the Masai Mara National Reserve, the northern extension of Tanzania's Serengeti National Park, and then moved on to Lake Naivasha, in the Rift Valley. This was followed by Kakamega Forest, near Lake Victoria, the only extant pocket of rainforest remaining in Kenya. Next came three more lakes—Baringo, Bogoria, and Nakuru—each rippling in the expanse of the Rift Valley. After that were the Aberdare Mountains, a range with alpine moorlands of heather, giant lobelias, and cascading waterfalls. Before returning to Nairobi, we allowed ourselves one night of luxury at Sweetwaters Tented Camp, a swanky property in a private game reserve covering some 22,000 acres smack on the equator, with front-row views of 17,058-foot Mount Kenya.

No fence separates the Mara's rolling grasslands from the Serengeti, which enables the world's greatest wildlife migration to occur, year in and year out. From July through October, some 1.5 million wildebeests, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of zebras, travel north into the Mara in search of fresh grass. As far as Saskia and Tamzen could tell, every member of this multitude was swarming around our Land Rover, especially wildebeests, walking single file or clumped together watching us watch them. The girls started counting the animals but soon gave up, happier just to count the different species—long-lashed giraffes, a pack of baboons scampering across the road, and massive Cape buffalo, their horns the shape of a fifties bob.

The most exciting day in the Masai Mara, the girls announced, was the one when we witnessed amorous lions and, later, a cheetah overtaking a Grant's gazelle. We spotted the cheetah from a distance and raced toward her as she began her chase. In a flash, she tackled the gazelle, sinking her teeth into its neck and carrying it off to her five fuzzy, gray-haired cubs, constantly on the alert to make sure no lion or hyena dashed in to make off with her prize.

For the most part, these extraordinary events enthralled the girls, who scrambled for their cameras and binoculars. At other times, their blasé attitude toward their remarkable surroundings appalled Amyas and me, though Dixon, a father of six and a veteran of many family safaris, laughed it off. Somehow, the girls found listening to the latest Hilary Duff CD, reading Lemony Snicket, or bouncing around in or—as was more often the case—atop the Land Rover more compelling than watching a family of banded mongooses or a shy pair of dik-diks.

Occasionally, when we asked Dixon to stop the vehicle for a closer look at wildlife, Saskia or Tamzen would blithely say, "Oh, we've already seen that"—in other words, if they'd seen an animal once, the thrill was gone forever. We coaxed them into paying attention for longer time spans so that they could watch an animal's behavior change over, say, 10 or 15 minutes. Sometimes they grew frustrated when they couldn't spot something through their binoculars. ("The lion is where? Under what tree? I don't see anything!") They fixated on the vulture feeding frenzy that occurred over the gazelle carcass after the cheetah and cubs left, especially when I said it reminded me of their reaction whenever I gave them a treat to share.

Their boundless energy and enthusiasm needed outlets besides cartwheeling off our vehicle—excursions on foot, for instance. A favorite was a hike near Lake Naivasha through Ol Njorowa, a narrow gorge of volcanic rock in Hell's Gate, one of the few national parks in Kenya where visitors are allowed to get out of their vehicles and explore on their own. Later that day, we got a bonus hike when we toured Crescent Island, a private game reserve in Lake Naivasha where we walked among waterbuck, zebras, giraffes, gazelles, and wildebeests. There were no predators, just herbivores grazing against a stunning backdrop of yellow-fever acacias, cactuses, massive agave and aloe plants, and groves of lofty papyrus.