Maasai Mara National Reserve

In terms of structuring your visit, think of the national reserve in three parts. In the west you have the Mara Triangle, between the Mara River and the Oloololo Escarpment. This lush, green area is only accessible from Oloololo Gate in the north, or by crossing the Purungat Bridge in the far south. It’s administered by the Mara Conservancy on behalf of Trans-Mara County Council based at Kilgoris (wmaratriangle.org). The rest of the national reserve, the Narok side, is administered by Narok County Council (wbit.ly/MaasaiMaraNarok) and consists of the Musiara sector in the north and the Sekenani sector in the centre and east. The Musiara sector, bounded by the Mara and Talek rivers, is the location of Governor’s Camp and Intrepids and has some of the most photogenic wildebeest river crossings. The Sekenani sector, the largest portion of the reserve, is bordered by the Talek, Mara and Sand rivers, and has Keekorok Lodge – the oldest lodge in the reserve – in its centre.

Outside the reserve, roughly a dozen conservancies, group ranches and private game ranches, usually run in partnership with the local Maasai communities, offer wildlife-viewing that is often the equal of what you’ll see in the reserve proper – increasingly reflected in their management practices, conservation work and prices. Some of them, including the Mara North and Mara Naboisho conservancies, only permit game drives for visitors staying at their camps and lodges, the aim being to limit visitor numbers and exclude drive-in minibus tours.

The Maasai Mara is the one part of Kenya where the concentrations of game that existed in the nineteenth century can still be seen, even if it’s true numbers have hugely diminished overall. The panorama sometimes resembles one of those wild-animal wall charts, where groups of unlikely-looking animal companions are forced into the artist’s frame. You can see a dozen different species in one gaze: gazelle, zebra, giraffe, buffalo, topi, kongoni, wildebeest, eland, elephant, hyena, jackal, ostrich, and a pride of lions waiting for a chance. The most interesting areas, scenically and zoologically, tend to be westwards, signalled by the long ridge of the Oloololo Escarpment. If you only have a day or two, and you’re inside the reserve, you could do worse than spend most of your time here, near the Mara River.

It sometimes seems, however, that wherever there are animals there are people – in minibuses, in Land Cruisers, in rented Suzukis, often parked in ravenous, zoom-lens-touting packs around understandably irritable lions, leopards and cheetahs (the official limit is five vehicles around an animal at any one time). This popularity is highly seasonal, and can be overbearing around Christmas and during the migration, but it need not spoil your visit. If you aren’t driving yourself, encourage your driver to explore new areas (obviously not off-road) and perhaps stress you’d rather experience the reserve in its totality than tick off animal species.

The animals

Big brunette lions are the best-known denizens of the Maasai Mara. Thirty years ago, as many as a thousand lions lived here, but their numbers have dropped hugely and there are now probably around 250 in the reserve, with perhaps another 150 in the conservancies, or around one in five of Kenya’s estimated population. They are relatively easy to find, however, and there are usually several prides firmly in possession of their territories in the Musiara and Sekenani sectors, as well as in the Triangle. Instinctively, they use the Mara’s river and stream meanders and many confluences as “lobster pots” to corner their prey in ambushes, and it is sometimes possible to watch them hunt, as they take very little notice of vehicles. The Mara Predator Project, run by Living With Lions, is creating an online ID database of the northern Mara prides. Lodge guides use the lions’ facial whisker spots to identify individuals, and visitors are encouraged to get involved by reporting sightings at wlivingwithlions.org/mara.

While lions seem to be lounging under every other bush, finding a cheetah is much harder (they can sometimes be seen on the murram mounds alongside the Talek–Sekenani road). These are usually solitary cats – slender, unobtrusive, somewhat shy and vulnerable to harassment by wildlife-watchers. Cases of cheetahs using vehicles as look-out hills – first noted only in the 1990s – have become common, as they lose their fear and adapt to close human scrutiny. Their natural hunting times are dawn and dusk, but some cheetahs prefer to hunt during the middle of the day, when the humans are shaded in the lodges. This is not a good time of day for the cheetah, which expends terrific energy in each chase and may have to give up if it goes on for more then thirty or forty seconds. When they move, cheetahs exhibit marvellous speed and agility and, if you’re lucky enough to witness a kill, it’s likely to take place in a cloud of dust a kilometre from where the chase began.

Leopards, are seen increasingly often in the daytime, and there are plenty of them. Leopard Gorge, in the Mara North Conservancy, is an obvious place to look. Their deep, grating roar at night – a grunt, repeated – is a sound which, once heard, you carry around with you.

Rangers are certain to know the current news about the black rhinos – every calf born is a victory – though finding them is often difficult. Check out the thickets of desert date trees (Balanites) near Little Governors’ marsh, or Rhino Ridge, where one or two of the reserve’s faru are sometimes obligingly positioned. There are also two white rhinos in the area, brought in from South Africa and living in the Ol Choro Oirouwa Rhino Sanctuary in the conservancy of the same name, close to Mara Safari Club. The sanctuary (wolchorro.blogspot.com) is upstream along the Mara River, well to the north of the reserve.

Maasai Mara’s other heavyweights are about in abundance. The Mara River surges with hippo, while big families of elephant traipse along the forested river and stream margins and spread out across the plains when there’s plenty of vegetation to browse. The reserve is home to an estimated thousand or so elephants, with another five hundred living in the districts beyond its boundaries.

Among all these outstanding characters, the herds of humble grazers can quickly fade into the background. It’s easy to become blasé when one of the much-hyped “big five” (elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion, leopard) isn’t eyeballing you at arm’s length – but those are the hunter’s trophies and not necessarily the photographer’s. Warthog families like rows of dismantled Russian dolls, zebra and gazelle, odd-looking hartebeest and slick, purple-flanked topi are all scattered with abandon across the scene. The topi are particularly characteristic of the Maasai Mara, being almost confined in Kenya largely to this reserve: there are always one or two in every herd standing sentry on a grass tussock or an old termite mound. Topi and giraffe – whose dream-like, slow-motion canter is one of the reserve’s most beautiful and underrated sights – are often good pointers for predators in the vicinity: look closely at what they’re watching.

The reserve used to have rare herds of roan antelope – swaggering, horse-sized animals with sweeping, curved horns, but they became extinct here in the 1970s, and today you’ll only see them in Ruma National Park near Lake Victoria. The roans are just a standout example of a serious decline in the Mara’s wildlife populations. Although the numbers are a constantly moving pattern, as animals move in and out of the counting zones used in aerial surveys, the long-term trend is very much down, with most species having lost at least half their Mara populations since the 1980s. Buffalo and giraffe have been particularly badly hit.

On a positive note, the surveys have concentrated on the reserve itself, and as community conservancies have replaced herding communities, so the wildlife has been moving into the much better managed areas beyond the reserve boundaries, all of which report increasing populations of wildlife. And wild dogs are back, reported from a number of conservancies.

One diversion you’re likely to be offered, especially if travelling on an organized safari, is a visit to a Maasai enkang, usually incorrectly called a manyatta (an enkang is an ordinary homestead, a manyatta a ceremonial bush camp). Forget about the authenticity of tribal life: this is the real world. Children and old people are sick, young men have moved to the towns, and everyone wants your money. Unprepared and uncomfortable, most visitors find the experience depressing or a bit of a rip-off, or both. You’ll pay around $20/person if organized by your lodge, camp or safari driver, or around Ksh1000/person if you arrange it yourself, for the right to have a look around, peer inside some dwellings, and be on the receiving end of a determined sales pitch to get you to buy souvenirs. Because of the supposed sales opportunity, safari drivers have for decades paid a tiny fee to the headman of their chosen village and kept the bulk of the cash (the standard commission, hard as it is to believe, was 96 percent, or less than a dollar per visitor actually paid to the community). A number of initiatives are now changing this, however, and the best operators and camps have worked hard to make the experience less mercantile and more worthwhile for both parties. If you can forget any TV-documentary illusions, and actually sit down and talk to the Maasai (there will always be people who speak a little English), the experience can be transformed and full of interest and laughter.