Masai Mara Game Reserve

Masai Mara is the most famous wildlife conservation area in Kenya and indeed the world. This game reserve is home to a rich variety of wildlife in a natural and untouched state. Masai Mara has a rolling Savannah landscape dotted with shrubs and bush thickets, and is the Kenyan part of the large ecosystem stretching south to Serengeti in Tanzania. The wildlife in Masai Mara is varied, ranging from the big cats to elephant, rhino and vast herds of herbivores such as wildebeest. A true animal kingdom.

Fact File on Masai Mara

Area: 1510 sq km Altitude: 1500 to 2180m [4950-7195 ft] Access from Nairobi: Road: 270 kms (5.5-6.5 hours) Air: 60 minutes, daily flights.
Location: Masai Mara is in the Rift Valley Province, S. W Kenya and S.E of Lake Victoria.
Animals: Prolific wildlife, including the "Big 5" and many more carnivores and plains herbivores.
Special Feautures: The world famous wildebeest migration.
Vegetation: Open savannah and light patches of bush, woodland. River forests along the Mara river.
Birds: Rich variety, including birds of prey such as vultures commonly found in Masai Mara and other Kenya parks. Other parks in Kenya such as Lake Nakuru however have a more diverse bird life than the Mara.
Accommodation: Several lodges, ranging from luxury to budget as well as campsites within the reserve.
Safari Attractions: Wildlife all year round, and the annual wildebeest migration between July and September makes Masai Mara a prime safari location.

Masai Mara Safari
There are several safari options by road to the Masai Mara. These mostly start from Nairobi, and include a scenic 5 - 6 hour drive into the Great Rift Valley and to the main Sekenani entry point of the Mara. Accommodation is in lodges or tented camps which offer quality service, rooms, and meals on a full board basis. Safaris are usually for a minimum of 2 nights / 3 days, although it is possible to have a quick one night safari here as well, though this is considered too short for a proper travel experience. Flying Safaris to Mara are also available.

The Maasai Community
This warrior tribe of nomadic pastrolists are descendants of Nilotic and Cushitic people originally from north of Lake Turkana over 10 centuries ago. Their life is dominated by their herds of their cattle and livestock. They often move hundreds of kilometers with large herds of livestock in search of water and rich pastures. The Masai diet is based on fresh curdled milk and meat from their livestock. Centuries ago the Maasai were feared as ruthless conquerors and cattle rustlers who invaded other tribal areas in search of bigger grazing land and more cattle. The Maasai are also famous for drinking a mixture of cattle blood and milk during ceremonial rites. An arrow is shot at close range to punture the jugular vein of the cow.

Conservation in the Masai Mara
The Masai Mara has a strong but vulnerable eco system with thousands of tourists annually visiting the reserve , putting pressure on the environment. Conservation in the Mara is of paramount importance, and has been targetted at preservation of the wildlife and environment.Like most third world countries, Kenya has growing demand for land, with the increasing population ever searching for more space to live and cultivate on. The Mara has it's share of human-animal conflict. This is an issue being taken up by government, conservation bodies and NGOs. Funds are a major problem when it comes to conservation and often, organisations involved in conservation bodies depend on charities and donor funding.
Safari to Masai Mara, Tours and Vacation Holidays in Maasai Africa Migration Trips. Masai Mara is “the” park of all parks in Kenya. The grass-carpeted smooth hills, the chocolate Mara river waters having mithful hippos, and the rich variety of fauna, fulfil the anticipations of any tourist looking African landscape displayed in motion pictures for example, “Out of Africa” or “Mogambo”. Save specific tastes and needs, this is the park leading the “must” list in the country: would be considered complete without a safari to Masai Mara. It is true that it is not graded best for bird lovers and also true that some species are rare to find. But leopards and rhinos are plenty, and with over 450 bird species, the reserve should not envy Samburu or the great Kenyan bird places. Though, in a region just a bit smaller than the state of Rhode Island and with changed and complicated geography, getting lost is far quicker compared to finding a leopard or viewing a certain bird group in its various woods.
The reserve created in 1961, is found west of the Rift valley and is naturally part of the Serengeti plains in Tanzania. The Mara river, the reserve’s backbone crosses north south lading to its westbound way into Victoria lake, via the Tanzanian park. This course is the natural obstacle harvested yearly by the many moving herds including wild beets and zebra which move through the two parks. As elaborated below, over one million wild beasts and 200,000 zebras wonder while looking for the green pastures, meeting the crocodile crowded river on the way. When the herds cross the steam, multiple animals die flattened or drowned, leaving their bones at the ground at the ledge of Mara river. Masai mara is at its peak, with the seasoned tourists inhabiting the huge grasslands from July to October.
Masai mara’s place of location and height above sea level is 1500m, yield climate that is more mild and more damp compared to other places. The grassy landscape and the nutrient wealth for the big herds are supported by the adequate rains, which here fall from November to June, as a fusion of the two rain seasons (long and short) found in other Kenya places. Night storms are often in the hells and plains. Grasslands are scattered with acacia woods and bush. The grounds at the edge of river Mara and of the many tributary streams are defined by dense riverine forests with a good opportunity to get some of the reserve’s bird groups.The long distance of the country’s recognized urban centres poses a difference that allows this reserve to maintain one of the characteristics which is currently becoming a strange event in African safari parks: wildlife wanders in total freedom, with no limits or other barriers around. Animals do not notice the limits drawn on the papers, not only those which separate Kenya from Tanzania, but also the boundaries of the reserved area.
The protected area is surrounded north and east by the so-called dispersal area, populated by the Maasai but in other words, similar to the province within the with exact or even more chances to view wildlife than at the reserve itself, often crowded by visitors arriving and moving around by car, minibus, airplane, balloon or micro light. Since it is kept as reserve and not as national park, Masai mara is not controlled by Kenya wildlife service but rather by the local authorities, called District Councils. The problem comes with the administrative decisions, defined by river Mara.
The eastern side is under Narok District, while the western sector is under Transmara District. This information, currently not important, is infact something one should have in mind in theory, the amount of money paid at the entrance is used to cater for touring the side belonging to the jurisdiction of the district through which the tourist has accessed. In practice, this condition is always overlooked, but just in case, its better you leave the park using the same district you used while entering. And in this wildlife webwork, where do Maasai pit?. The normad pastoral tribe, which was feared in the past due to their warrior behaviour, populates these lands since the olden days. When Chief Lenana signed an agreement in 1911 with the colonial government, he agreed to sell the Maasai provinces and moving southward, in a bid to develop Nairobi’s urban centers. But the Masai mara area had been left already over the 19th Century, when epidemics and tribal warfare put to death the Maasai people and put them to a lower level, which they are still anticipating to recover from. Therefore, the ancient Maasai foretelling, which forecasted the coming of the colonialists also prophesied a future that would bring back the old magnificence days. When the reserve was initiated in 1961, it was intended to conserve animals in a deserted and wild country, where wildlife was almost ending, because of a lot of killing done by white hunters.
The protection of this region, leaving alone other factors, enabled re-inhabiting of the province by the Maasai, who were put under the control of the reserve’s management by the District Councils, by virtue of its status. Even if land conflicts are still going on, the preferred way for protecting this natural space attempts to give some reward to the Maasai through trading with visitors, both through campsite management, handcraft selling and tours to villages. All of it offers a permanent source of income, though scarce and unstable, for these people who fight for protectring their traditions against progress. Their aspect and legend overtime has turned them into a mythical tribe, which sparsely gives attention to the romantic image forged around them.

Masai Mara Safari
The fact is that the Maasai strive hard between their classical conservation and the attempt to join the files of industrial change looking for a better kept up life Their inclination to take a grip on tradition, has given hem a consent to sympathy and admiration from visitors looking for picturesque scenes, but also refusal from the more proceeding Kenyans, who believe that a normal pastoral tribe in the 21st Century’s world economy is doomed to poverty.
Currently, various Maasai customs are limited by law, fro example, hunting of lions, whereas the rest, for example traditional hunting on blood and milk fall into disregard slowly by slowly. Meanwhile, visitors anticipate to find at the same time the Orzowei’s Maasai and a safe and peaceful country without poaching, with no cattle in the reserve and with no broad-snouted Indian crocodiles. A combination impossible, spare making it compulsory fro the Maasai to turn into something close to thermatic workers of the park youngsters putting on jeans and feeding on humbuggers that dress up at night in their parent’s clothes to execute their tribal dances of thousands of years ago. After all, some of it can be seen today in the pierced ears of various waiters and cooks of te lodge.
May these latter iconoclast paragraphs be like one of those outdated spears we could view in that old martin and Osa Johnson’s movie. “Simba” (1928), where a group of Maasai moran chased a lion. In this case, I throw my spear against the monster of standardisation got from the western world, and for defending of a better future for all the Maasai, which may enable them to select their own destiny freely and get rid of the give and take they are suffering continuously.