We went to Kenya as newlyweds. We came home changed.

A honeymoon that started with a promise

Most couples pick a beach for their honeymoon. We picked Kenya because of my father-in-law. He had been on safari years before, and at our wedding he told us you haven't really started a marriage until you've watched the sun come up over the Maasai Mara together. Then he said he was coming too. We laughed. He wasn't joking, and I'm grateful every day that he wasn't.

He had stayed in touch with the guide from his first trip, a soft-spoken man named Polycarp. When we came through arrivals in Nairobi, Polycarp was there holding a hand-lettered sign. He saw my father-in-law, dropped the sign, and the two of them hugged for a long time. Neither of them seemed to notice the crowd.

From that moment we weren't tourists on a tour. We were Polycarp's guests, and Kenya treated us like family.

Laikipia, wild dogs, and a Samburu welcome

Polycarp drove us north to Laikipia, a high plateau of private ranches and community land where cattle and wildlife share the same grass. We stayed at Sosian, an old ranch house with a stone at the gate that has the name painted on it in white.

On our second morning Polycarp stopped the truck and whispered, "Look." Three African wild dogs trotted straight down the track toward us. There are only a few thousand left in all of Africa. My father-in-law, who had done this before, said he had never seen them. Polycarp just smiled like he had planned it.

A pink shoreline in the Rift Valley

Halfway down the Rift Valley the road drops to Lake Nakuru. From a distance the shoreline looks like it's been painted pink. Up close, it's tens of thousands of flamingos feeding in the shallows. A herd of buffalo walked right between us and the birds, and the whole pink line lifted, wheeled and settled again.

The Mara, and the morning I'll never forget

We reached the Mara in the long grass season, when the plains turn green and the wildebeest begin to arrive from the south. That first evening, under a sky so full of stars it looked fake, Polycarp told us to be ready at 5:30.

We went up in a hot-air balloon before dawn. The burner roared, the ground fell away, and the sun came up orange over the plains, exactly the way my father-in-law had promised. Below us, elephants moved through the trees in single file and the Mara River curled through the grass like a brown ribbon. My wife held my arm so hard it left a mark. Nobody in the basket said a word.

Over the next week we watched a lion and lioness lounge in the grass close enough to hear them breathe, a leopard drape herself over a branch, and crowned cranes dance for each other in a clearing. In the evenings Polycarp would pull over at the best view he could find and pour us a glass of something cold while the light went gold.

The day the Maasai made me jump

On our last day in the Mara, Polycarp took us to a Maasai village near land his family has grazed for generations. The women met us first in a wall of color, singing a welcome song and laughing at how pale we were.

Then the warriors, the moran, lined up in their red shukas for the adumu, the jumping dance. Each man leaps straight up, higher and higher, while the others sing a deep rhythm underneath. They handed me a stick and told me it was my turn. I did my best. The whole village laughed, then cheered, then made me do it again.

Tsavo, where the elephants are red

The last leg took us southeast to Tsavo, Kenya's biggest park. It feels like a different country. The soil is rust red, the elephants dust themselves in it until they're red too, and black lava flows from old volcanoes run for miles under the Chyulu Hills.

At Mzima Springs, crystal-clear water bubbles up from under the lava, and a pod of hippos spends the whole day in it. We watched them from the bank for an hour. My father-in-law named every one of them.

What Kenya taught us about animals

On our last morning we visited an elephant orphanage outside Nairobi. Keepers in green coats walked baby elephants out of the forest and fed them giant bottles of milk while the babies flapped their ears and pushed each other for a turn. Each keeper sleeps beside his elephant at night, so it's never alone.