Safari in Kenia - Masai Mara

Home Nairobi Treetops Lake Nakuru Masai Mara Masai Tribe Kenya				Masai Mara From Lake Nakuru, we drove over five hours to finally get to one of the most desired sites in Africa. The Masai Mara. The region of the Masai People and the famous Mara river near the border witch Tanzania. This famous site on the animals migrate every season from one side to the other: Kenya - Masai Mara Tanzania - Serengeti Basic Facts - Details
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	Hotel	Typical tree of the África	In front of the room	Room	Walkway in the Hotel
	Walkway in the Hotel	Monkey on the walkway	Monkey face	Lion	Lion
	Lion	Lion	Lion	lioness	lioness
	lioness	lioness	lioness	lioness	Hyena
	Hyena	Gnus	Gnus and zebras	Eagle	Jabiru stork
	Like a big chicken	Elephant	Elephant	Elephant	Elephant
	Elephant	Elephant alcoholic food	Elephant alcoholic food	Cheeta	Cheetah
	Cheetah	Hippos	Hippos	Hippos	Hippos
	Crocus	Crocus	Crocus	Monkey	Giraffe
	Giraffe	Giraffe	Giraffe	Antelope	Antelopes
	Antelope	Antelope	Antelopes	Antelope	Kenya and Tanzania division

Basic Facts
Size: 1,672 sq kms
Province: Rift Valley
District: Narok
Geographical Location: South - Western Kenya bordering Serengeti National Park, on the Tanzania border.
Altitude: 1,500-2,170m
Vegetation: Open grasslands with patches of acacia woodland, thickets, and riverine forests.
Fauna: In the dry season July-October) the reserve is a major concentration area of migratory herbivores including approximately 250,000 zebra and 1.3 million wildebeest. There are also gazelle, elephant, topi, buffalo, lion (Kenya's largest population), black rhino, hippo, hyena, giraffe, leopard, and mongoose.
Bird Life: Prolific, including 53 birds of prey.
Visitor Facilities: Several lodges and campsites.

Details
The Maasai Mara is Kenya's finest wildlife sanctuary. Everything about this reserve is outstanding. The wildlife is abundant and the gentle rolling grassland ensures that animals are never out of sight. Birds too are prolific, including migrant birds and 57 species of birds of prey.
The climate is gentle, rarely too hot and well spread rainfall year round. When it rains, its is almost always in the late afternoon or night. Between July and October, when the great wildebeest migration is in the Mara the sensation is unparalleled.
The wildlife is far from being confined within the Reserve boundaries and an even larger area, generally refered to as the 'dispersal area' extends north and east of the game Reserve. Maasai live within the dispersal area with their stock but centuries of close association with the wildllife has resulted in an almost symbiotic relationship where wildlife and people live in peace with one another.

The first sight of this park is breathtaking. Here the great herds of shuffling elephants browse among the rich tree-studded grasslands with an occasional sighting of a solitary and ill-tempered rhino, Thompson's and Grant's gazelle, topi and eland and many more species of plains' game offer a rich choice of food for the dominant predators; lion, leopard and cheetah which hunt in this pristine wilderness.
In the Mara River, hippo submerge at the approach of a vehicle only to surface seconds later to snort and grumble their displeasure. But this richness of fauna, this profusion of winged beauty and the untouched fragility of the lanscape, are all subordinate to the Mara's formost attraction, the march of the wildebeest.
After exhausting the grazing in Tanzania's northern Serengeti National Park, a large number of wildebeest and zebra enter Masai Mara around the end of June drawn by the sweet grass raised by the long rains of April and May. It is estimated that more than half a million wildebeest enter the Mara and are joined by another 100,000 from the Loita hills east of the Mara. Driving in the midst of these great herds is an unimaginable experience.

Whilst the eyes feast on the spectacle, the air carries the smells, the dust and the sounds of hundreds of thousands of animals. There is nowhere else on earth to compare with this wildlife marvel. Once the Mara grass has been devoured and when fresh rain in Tanzania has brought forth a new flush there, the herds turn south, heading hundreds of kilometeres back to Serengeti and the Ngorongoro plains. there the young are dropped in time to grow sufficiently strong to undertake the long march north six months later.
Apart from the better known species, there are also other rare ones that can be added to the visitor's checklist. These include the roan antelope, the Bat-eared foxes and thousands of topi.
The combination of a gentle climate, scenic splendour and untold numbers of wildlife makes the Masai Mara National Reserve Kenya's most popular inland destination.