Why take children on safari? Most African safaris, after all, involve "game drives" – long slow progressions by 4x4 through a yellowing landscape occasionally punctuated by silent halts where you stare at distant yellow animals through binoculars, one of the few gadgets that children cannot master.

There is, on the other hand, that deep need of parents to see their children displaying an affinity for animals. So what could be better than a trip to east Africa? In the heartfelt and unforgettable words of one mother I know: "I want my child to be stimulated by elephants."

Maddy, aged eight, is very keen on elephants. She gets off the plane in Nairobi glancing around in excitement. "When will we see the elephants?"

Not too long ago that was a valid question on the outskirts of the city, but nowadays you get ribbon development and traffic. I give her the talk. "You know it's not going to be like on television. These are wild animals. They are actually very shy. We might have to work quite hard to catch just a glimpse."

Maddy, excitement nipped in the bud, falls asleep, shortly before a trio of giraffes come loping through the monkey-laden trees alongside the main Nairobi to Mombasa highway.

We are on what is billed as an inexpensive safari, staying in conservation areas just outside two of Kenya's most famous national parks: Amboseli and Masai Mara. Inexpensive is not a word normally linked with safaris. In fact the modern tourist safari developed from the big game hunter experience, all vast numbers of staff and acres of canvas. This promises to be rather different, a safari to match the changing mood in a country now confidently emerging from a post-colonial period: practical, egalitarian and without the hint of condescension that hangs over much of the luxury end of the market. It's still hardly budget, though. Will it be worth it?

I had another worry too: would "inexpensive" mean reduced wildlife? Would we be shown a couple of tame gazelles then treated to the "Aren't ants fascinating?" lecture, a sure-fire sign of the scarcity of bigger game.

I need not have worried. When we turn off the highway and start on the dirt roads, Maddy wakes up and immediately spots something. "Look! Funny cows with two legs!"

We get closer and she sees her mistake. "Ostriches!"

They are followed by a small herd of impala, a dik-dik and a giraffe. Her excitement levels are reaching unsustainable levels, but show no sign of dropping as we begin to labour through some muddy patches. The forest here is thicker and in one particularly thick clump we come to the camp, a group of tents surrounded by a stout thorn bush fence.

This is the end of the season in Kenya, the start of the rains, and we are the only guests in a camp that normally takes 18. Hence we have acres of canvas and vast numbers of friendly staff, including Emmanuel Mpararia, a Maasai man of such awesome charm, intelligence and towering good looks that Maddy decides, very sensibly, to stick close and ply him with an endless series of questions.

"If an elephant gets stuck in brambles, can it get out?"

"What is a Maasai warrior?"

This is interrupted by the chef, who has come running over to tell us that elephants are approaching. There is a flurry of scarlet cloaks as the staff, all local Maasai warriors, dash to grab their spears, but Maddy remains calm in the imperturbable presence of Emmanuel. He leads us slowly through the back gate and there, casually removing a 15m tree from its path, is a massive male elephant. We watch for a while, then the elephant ambles away and we return to camp for lunch and a chance to meet the man behind the Selenkay Conservancy, Jake Grieves-Cook.

Jake is a white Kenyan who has spent his life in the hotel and tourist business. "This all started in 1995," he says. "I was visiting Amboseli national park, just a few miles away, and got talking to Jacob Leyian, who was a cook at a tourist lodge."

Jacob happened to be head of a nearby Maasai community land area that was exhausted from over-grazing and which wild animals had deserted. The two men hatched an idea to manage the land, encouraging wildlife to return, and then bring tourists in. They made a rough calculation that 700 acres per tourist would maintain privacy for both animals and humans. Every visitor would generate a cash payment to the community.

It was the plan for jobs, however, that was really ground-breaking. Previously, the tourist business had been largely controlled by Nairobi people, mostly white or Asian, with locals in menial positions. Now the Maasai would have a chance. In 1999, Selenkay, Kenya's first "conservancy", welcomed its first tourist and kick-started a movement that is sweeping across the country and has the potential to revolutionise life for thousands of rural people. All the staff are locals, including camp manager Emmanuel and chef Fanwel.

"You know this used to be a hunting area," Jake tells me. "Hemingway came and shot here. But now we've got the animals coming back and it's sustainable. We've got two prides of lions, 200 giraffe and 21 cheetahs. And we've employed 60 local people."

One of Jake's ideas is that the safari does not have to be a grand and ostentatious affair, with four-poster beds draped in silk nets. We are sleeping in standard dome tents with a small outdoor shower and toilet behind. All the meals (and they are exceptional) are taken in a separate area under the shade of the acacias. Birds swoop in, and the occasional monkey, but the traditional thorn bush fence keeps most of the wildlife out. At night we hear it: a hyena yowling, an impala's alarm call and, distantly, the deep roar of a male lion.

Next day we are up early. A kingfisher, its wings a scorching blue, cackles in the tree above my tent. We are going to walk a few miles to a nearby Maasai village and say hello.

On the way out of camp we spot the remains of a topi, a large antelope, hanging 20 feet off the ground in a tree – the night-time haul of a leopard, of which there is no sign. We are actually quite a large party because all the staff seem to be coming along for the trip, a useful thing as their eyes are so sharp we miss nothing: eland, gazelles, a warthog, and lots of signs and tracks.

One of the guards starts to make a bow as we stroll. Another chops out a few arrows. Before too long everyone is armed and the arrows start flying. My hat is commandeered and put on a stick where it is peppered with arrows to cries of laughter. An hour passes and Maddy has lost any shyness with this gang of warriors: they are all playing and she's learning a few words of Maasai. Next thing they are teaching her spear-throwing techniques, and I can see Maddy is thinking that becoming a Maasai might be a good idea. The village of Noonkulak, however, will soon sort that out.

Like our camp, the village is ringed by a thorn bush fence, but inside it is a very different place indeed – a set of rectangular mud huts around a central pile of cow dung, where the herds spend the night. Children come forward to have their heads touched, the traditional greeting, but Maddy being so big for her age causes some confusion.

"Is she a girl?" asks one girl. "She carries a bow and arrow."

All this is in Maasai, which I'm getting translated.

Flies settle with gentle over-familiarity around our eyes. The children are in rags and barefoot, the women say they have to fetch water from a long distance and Maddy tests the weight of a full jerrycan and winces. The revolution that conservancy status was meant to bring might appear to have not touched this place. But our guides, locals themselves, are adamant that all 100 villages within the conservancy are benefiting from the jobs and from the regeneration of their land.

Maddy heads out with the children and they bring a herd of goats back. By means of gestures they work out their ages. "You are the same age as me," shouts one boy, who is a head shorter than Maddy and brandishing a stick. "So let's stick fight!"

We leave with big friendly goodbyes. We have not been asked for money – the conservancy pays a small fee per tourist head for every visit – and we have not been given the hard sell on handicrafts. In fact we haven't left behind anything. Did our visit do anyone any good, I wonder? Maddy has clearly been shocked by the sheer alien nature of Maasai living. Will that make a long-term impression?

The second part of our trip is to Ol Kinyei Conservancy, 17,500 acres of land close to Masai Mara national reserve, through which we must pass. This short cut is about to give us a lesson in the realpolitik of game parks in Africa.

Our guide, Jimmy Lemara, has got us plastic swipe cards that have pre-paid entry fees. The charge is US$80 each. But at the gate the officers refuse to let us in. At the side of the building I can see a seated party of local men whose body language tells me they have some importance, and are angry.

One uniformed man explains the situation. The swipe cards have been introduced by the government, and that has stopped all payments in cash at the gate. This cash was usually diverted into the pockets of local politicians. The men are protesting that the swipe cards mean central government will take all the receipts and no local person will see anything.

"These men employed many people in this area," explains the guard. "They spent a lot of money." He pauses, then grins. "Mostly on big houses for themselves."

It seems to me that the little flea just got hit by the big flea. I walk over to the seated men and ask to be let into the park. They refuse at first, but after a little cajoling we are allowed in.

As we're driving into the Mara, rain begins to fall. We spot lions. We cross the park and exit at another gate before reaching the Talek river, the border of Ol Kinyei. After an hour of rain it has become uncrossable by vehicle so we walk across a narrow footbridge and reach a game scout's 4x4 on the far side. Jimmy glances back at the rising water as we head off. "Now you are trapped inside Ol Kinyei," he laughs. "This is your world now."

Our camp is under tall trees where purple-fronted sunbirds are flitting through tresses of yellow orchids lit by post-pluvial sunshine.

The ground is silver with the fallen wings of flying ants. Next day we climb White-necked Hill with our good-humoured gang of Maasai warriors-cum-camp-workers and spot animals: a klipspringer antelope, a giraffe, elephants, bat-eared foxes and jackals.

Our memory of the real world, with its manmade problems of money and greed, is falling away. We learn how to use a tree for deodorant, and how to track the elusive caracal cat and the obtrusive hippo. We extract chewing gum from a tree, then honey, and we practise throwing a rungu – the lethal Maasai hunting stick. One night I open the tent and catch in my torch beam a genet, a spotted cat of such exquisite beauty that I cannot believe I saw it for only half a second, so indelible is the mark in my memory.

Then one day, skirting a broad area of long grass, Jimmy stops and points. "Cheetahs."

For a long time we can't make them out, but then the cheetahs oblige by breaking cover and walking towards us. There is a mother with two cubs.

The following day we drive to the far side of the conservancy and see mongooses, baboons, hippos and crocodiles. We are far into our bubble now. All Africa is ours: the outside world is no more.

Twenty-five years ago when I lived in Africa, that bubble was widely available and could last a long time. I once went without post or outside news for eight months. Phones and electricity did not exist. Life was a rhythm of sun and moon, rain and shine. But now that kind of seclusion comes in shorter doses. We are driving parallel to a small wooded stream when I spot a figure, a man running with a spear. It is only a glimpse, then he's hidden by a thicket. It's a jolt to realise we are not so far from civilisation. We drive the 4x4 around the thicket and find a group of excited men brandishing spears.

"A lion just killed our cow!" they shout. Sure enough, there's a dead cow in a tangle of thorn bushes, a single devastating tooth mark on its neck.

They are pointing at the thicket. "It happened one minute ago. He's in there! Let's go in and get him!"

Maddy gets out of the car and pulls a wad of lion's mane from a thorn.

"It's from one of the Ol Kinyei lions," says Jimmy, inspecting it.

We drive away, leaving the men building a fire. They are going to have a barbecue right there and then. There is no sign of the lion, which seems to have made a clean getaway.

Our bubble has gone. The reality of life in an area with dangerous animals has made itself clear, as have the challenges of conservation. As we drive back to camp to collect our luggage and leave, I'm remembering what Maddy did. That little bit of observation – the hair on the thorn – and the sense to grab it. There were many benefits to her children's safari, and becoming alert and attentive to her surroundings was one. She learned to read the signs and react. The presence of lions would, I suppose, have a sharpening effect on the senses. A week had not been long, but we did feel we had been immersed in the wilderness and seen Maasai life at close quarters. And "inexpensive"? Not exactly, but there is a satisfaction in knowing that your money goes to the community, not the fat cat.

Back home, there is further proof that Maddy was paying attention. "Would you like to be a Maasai?" I ask.

"I'd like to see Emmanuel and Jimmy again," she says, "But I wouldn't like to be a Maasai. The girls have to walk a long way to get water."