Masai Mara is one of the largest national parks in Kenya and one of the hottest tourist destinations in that region for game drives. The idle time to visit this place is around June-August. That is the time when the great migration happens ant you can witness some of the finest wildlife actions that you were only seeing in television till now. Once you go on an african safari, you won’t feel like visiting any other national park to see these majestic wild animals. They are in their natural habitat and are not afraid to come close to the vehicles. You can see them hunting, playing, eating, sleeping, mating and fighting. And needless to say, this is a paradise for photographers in general and wild life photographers in particular. The whole area is a part of the Great Rift Valley which extends 6000 Kms from Lebanon to Mozambique. It provides a safe harbour for the wild life and has a balanced ecosystem for all kinds of predators, prays and birds to flourish.

Reaching there: The closest city for Masai Mara will be Nairobi. Nairobi is well connected to all major airports in the world. From India you have the options of directly taking the national carrier of Kenya or you can use Ethiopian Airlines like we did. The city itself has not much to offer but you can keep 1-2 days to explore it and observe the life style of urban Africa. You can also try out some African cuisines while you are in the city.
The best way to reach Masai Mara from here is to book seats through a tour agency. There are several ones leaving from Nairobi almost every day for a 3-4 day trip covering Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru. We booked through Karibu Safaris and our guide Haruni was a star in finding animals and an encyclopaedia for everything about wildlife. We made some payment in advance and gave the rest just before the trip started.

Visa: The visa for Kenya was online and very straight forward. We got back the approved application in four days. You just have to take a print out of it and you are all set to go.

Things to do:
– Lake Nakuru: This was on our way to Masai Mara from Kenya. Our guide explained about it and ask all of us if we are interested in making a stop there. We just asked him if he thinks it is worth it and he told that he would have gone if he was in our place. And right he was. As a first stop it gives some amazing views of animals living around the lake with a great collection of birds as well. A boat ride is highly recommended in this place to see the wildlife up and close. You will easily spend few hours here and won’t regret it at all. Here are few pics from there.

–Masai Mara Game Drive: This one will last couple of days. You will spend the whole day in the national park with packed lunch for food. Better to start early to see the animals hunting. Since Masai Mara is more densely packed compared to Serengeti, the chances of seeing all kinds of wildlife becomes much higher. Make sure that your guide uses his walkie-talkie to connect to other guides in the same channel so that he gets to know of any interesting activity happening around and will drive you quickly to the spot. One big advantage of Masai Mara is that there is no restriction on the vehicles to stick to pre-assigned path. Our guide took us all over the place to get the complete fun of the game drive. That is not the case in Serengeti.

-Masai People:In the evenings when you are not in the game drive, you can spend some time with the Masai People. Masai Mara got its name from this tribe. Even though they have moved on from the old ways of living, still they stick to their stories to attract the tourists. One such claim is that even now they only eat three things: Milk, Meat and Blood. They are fun people to hang out with its good to look at their homes and have a traditional dance with them.

–Food: In Kenya you can find lot of good restaurants serving traditional African food which you won’t find anywhere back at your home. One of their staples is Ugali which is made of rice and people eat it with a meat gravy.

Watch Outs:
-Take mosquito repellant creams. The tent accommodation near the national park doest have a lot of them
– Get lot of sunscreen as lotion as well
-Pack some ready to eat foods
-Get a telephoto lens camera

This will be one of the national park tripes of your lives and the one which sets the bar so high that hardly any of the others will be able to meet it.
Check out more shots of wild life that we were able to capture in our blog on African Wildlife.