"Masai Mara" a Masai Mara Game Reserve Travel Page by grets

A journey through the magnificent game park of Masai Mara is an experience that leaves no-one unchanged. This jewel of a park offers diverse and complex geography with grass-carpeted hills disappearing into the hazy distance, an abundance of game and a profusion of winged beauty. This is a place of natural drama with the timeless cycle of life, death and regeneration being played out before your very eyes. The fabled Mara offers endless photographic opportunities by way of its rich and varied wildlife which roams in complete freedom in this pristine landscape.

Masai Mara is named for the local tribe who have resided in this area for hundreds of years, the Maasai, and the Mara, the river that runs through the reserve. The reserve is affectionately referred to as the ‘Mara’. Having the official designation as a park reserve, rather than national park status, means that the local population are permitted to graze their animals and shoot game if they are attacked. This unique co-existence of man and animal does not appear to significantly disturb the untouched fragility of the wilderness.

The Mara is a 200 square mile national reserve on the edge of the Great Rift Valley and border with Tanzania. As home to the greatest concentration of large mammals on earth it is widely recognised as Africa’s ultimate wildlife reserve. The park is the northern annexe to the vast Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, famous for its annual migration of wildebeest. This is an overwhelming place of breathtaking vistas, endless plains and the most abundant variety of wildlife remaining anywhere in the world. The landscape is made up of rolling savannahs dotted with sporadic shrubs and bush thickets. The name Mara, does in fact mean “spotted” in the local language.