Masai Mara Safari in Kenya

When choosing a Kenya safari, the Masai Mara is one of the top places that come to mind. This is because it’s home to the Big Five – lion, elephant, leopard, rhinoceros and buffalo. If you plan to spend at least three days on a Masai Mara safari, you’ll have a very high chance of seeing at least four of the five. The most elusive is the rhinoceros.

A Masai Mara safari is an experience that all wildlife lovers should try. Once you’ve been one time, chances are you’ll want to go back again and again. The Masai Mara triangle is teaming with wildlife and a few days of wildlife watching will bring many amazing experiences.

Most visitors to the Masai Mara have to spend a day or two in Nairobi. For more African experiences read:

Masai Mara Safari

Masai Mara Wildlife Experiences

A tale of three cheetahs 

On the second day of our Masai Mara safari, we’re bumping up and down in the back seat of a safari vehicle, bones rattling, as we fly through a field of grass.

From the excited tone of the voice of our guide, who is jabbering away in Swahili, it looks like there’s a predator around the area.

The Masai Mara National Reserve is an African landmark and one of the best places in the world to see cheetahs in the wild.

With 1510sqkm of grasslands, it’s sometimes difficult to get a good eyeful of the world’s fastest land animal.

Today, we’re in luck.

We arrive at a scene to see three cheetahs and there’s a bonus.,a pack of hyenas and jackals as well.

We’re just in time to get a photo of a hyena staring defiantly at the cheetahs with a baby gazelle hanging from its mouth.

In the distance are Thompson’s gazelles and impalas watching with interest.

Our guide beats on the steering wheel in frustration. When he calms down, he tells us the three cheetahs are young males out on one of their first kills.

As the hyena has stolen their food, this could mean that the cheetahs could go hungry for the rest of the day. It’s a raw lesson in the Masai Mara university of life.

The cheetahs were cubs of a female cheetah that died in an accident while being tranquilised. The Masai Mara community was devastated but there was an even bigger problem.

Her cubs were only nine months old and had not yet been taught to hunt. The Masai Mara Rangers were afraid that the cubs wouldn’t survive in the wild on their own.

As cheetahs are rapidly becoming an endangered species, the Rangers would keep an eye on the cubs to help them along.

The alternative would have been a cheetah orphanage.

The cheetah is the world’s fastest land animal.

They can run fast (up to 112kph) but they have weak jaws and small teeth, which means they’re not that well equipped to fight larger predators.

Due to poaching and loss of habitat through farming, the species is endangered.

We feel privileged to have more cheetah sightings; three female cheetahs. The mother and her two daughters run and jump playfully.

Mother cheetah watches a family of warthogs (African wild pigs) walking through the plains.

The adult cheetah springs into action when the warthogs come close to her cubs and chases them away.

Masai Mara Migration

The Masai Mara Great Migration is a bucket list event when millions of wildebeests, zebras and gazelles cross the Mara River from Tanzania’s Serengeti.

During the Masai Mara migration, the plains in the Mara are a sea of wildlife. The Mara River crossing is a jaw-dropping sight, where thousands of wildebeests and zebras cross the river.

The Masai Mara Migration is also a confronting experience, as many don’t make it and dead wildebeest carcasses float in some parts of the river to be devoured by the crocodiles.

One of the strong points of the Masai Mara is that no matter what time of year you visit, there’s plenty of wildlife to see.

On one trip two months before the migration, our daily safaris while staying in luxury at Sanctuary Olonana safari camp reveals a Noah’s Ark of creatures.

We see herds of African buffaloes, with impressive curled horns.

White cattle egrets are small birds that hop on and off the backs of these buffaloes, picking at insects.

Seeing so many animals in the Masai Mara National Park soon becomes the norm and it’s easy to take it all for granted. But it’s good to remember you’re in the wild and anything can happen.

Buffaloes can be extremely dangerous and our guide tells us about a near-fatal accident with one.

A guest decided to hop out of the vehicle and answer the call of nature behind a bush.

A buffalo came out of nowhere and charged straight at the bush. The guide jumped out to rescue the guest and found himself on his back facing an angry buffalo. He was lucky to escape with a wounded leg.

Lions, leopards and elephants

Masai Mara safaris are likely to bring sightings of lions, elephants, giraffes, birds and all kinds deer.

One of the more amazing sights in the Masai Mara game reserve is a lioness dragging a freshly killed topi by the neck while a pride of male lions sleep some distance away.

Another highlight is seeing a Martial eagle perched on a mound. The eagle has just killed an Egyptian goose and is looking mighty pleased.

Each day brings more animal sightings, such as Thompson’s gazelles wagging their tails, giraffes grazing on treetops and serval cats darting among the grass.

There are so many elephants and flocks of wildebeests.

Our guide shows us a half-eaten carcass of a gazelle wedged in the high branches of an Acacia tree.

It’s a leopard’s dinner but the leopard is nowhere in sight.

One afternoon, we come across two young lions. The lions are surrounded by game-viewing vehicles.

At first, the lions ignore the sightseers and roll over on their backs.

We hang around for a while and one of the lions walks right up to the rear wheel of our 4WD and rubs its back against the tyre.

The lions are so used to seeing vehicles they usually ignore them.

According to our guide, the lions thing that the vehicles as large friendly beasts.

Although, there was one crazy lion that liked to jump through the open vehicles.

Masai Mara hot air balloon

Of all the experiences in Kenya, I’d have to put flying in a hot air balloon at the top of my list of things I’d do again next time.

Drifting dreamily