Maasai Mara National Reserve is an alien Savannah dotted with big game Safari recipes an ideal destination of a kenya Safari that gives an objective point of greater interest for motor travel on your game drive or taking a mule ride or hike down to the contiguous Serengeti National Park in Mara Region Narok County, Kenya.
Maasai Mara National Reserve is also known as Maasai Mara, Masai Mara and by the locals as The Mara forming up a large game reserve crowned by hundreds of Maasai Mara wildlife, unique vegetation, woodlands and mountains all represented in a magical concentration overlapping down the plains.
The Savannah is a rich base of culture, not forgetting that the park was named after the Maasai people, the real ancestral inhabitants of the plains. The naming of the Savannah was to honor the Masaai communities inhabiting the central and southern Kenya.
The Mara is an ideal centre for a big game Safari as you watch the sun set (or rise) below the canyons, and then seeing the spotted exceptional high number of lions, leopards and cheetahs not forgetting being amused by tge annual migration of zebras, wildebeest migration, Thomson’s gazelles crossing to and from the Serengeti National park every year from July to October, known as the Great Migration.
The Maasai Mara National Reserve forms just a section of the whole Greater Mara Ecosystem, which is a heaven of wildlife when looked at from afar on your Safari. The greater Mara is also formed by other group ranches which include Ol Chorro Oirowua, Olkinyei, Koiyaki, Siana, Lemek, Kimintet, Kerinkani, Naikara, Oloirien, Maji Moto and Ol Derkesi
The Mara started as a wildlife sanctuary in the 1960’s and by then was a defined Savannah sited on 520 square kilometres to include also the Mara Triangle, later it was extended eastern part to cover 1,821 km2, forming up a large authentic game reserve existing with some of the local communities occupying over 159km2.
The Maasai Mara National Reserve is the oldest, by the record of the rocks, and richest in existing species of any mingled hardwood and is primarily an open grassland with seasonal riverlets, the south eastern region being crowned by dotted clumps of acacia. The park hugs borders with Esoit (Siria) Escarpment of the East African Rift and it’s recorded to rich with highest concentrations of Mara wildlife due to the abundant swampy water
Maasai Mara National Reserve wildlife is a fine pool for a kenya tourist, fall in love with the Savannah recipes, the Cloud shadows are hide outs to all members of the Big Five” (lion, leopard, elephant, cape buffalo, and rhinoceros). The umbrella acacia trees are mostly loved by the predators and most often you will see the tree climbing lions, leopards, cheetahs targeting their preys and some relaxing off the sun.
The wildebeests are the dominant inhabitants of the Maasai Mara and can be counted in millions. They form schools of populations that normally crosses northwards from the adjacent Serengeti plains looking for water and pasture and will then return in the October when the climate changes.
The Great Masai Mara wildebeest Migration is an exceptional experience not to miss, seeing over millions of wildebeest, thousands of Thomson’s gazelles and Topis, then an estimated number of over 18,000 elands, 1,300,000 wildebeest, 500,000 Thomson’s gazelles, 97,000 Topi, 18,000 elands, and more than 200,000 zebras. Some times their annual predators like lions and hyenas will match along following their seasonal preys, it’s survival for the fittest in the Mara.
The Maara is also a home to other hundreds of dwellers including the impalas, Grant’s gazelles, Coke’s hartebeests, Masai giraffes, duikers , the roan antelopes, nocturnal like bat eared fox among others. Not forgetting the plains are an ideal destination for a Kenya birding Safari, over 470 bird species have been recorded in the Park, for bird lovers get eye with the commons and seasonal migrants, the most common raptors seen throughout the year include the secretary birds, long-crested eagles, African pygmy-falcons, the lilac-breasted roller – the national bird of Kenya, horn-bills, crowned cranes, ostriches, vultures, marabou storks.