Masai Mara National Reserve

The Great Migration through Kenya and Tanzania

Together with the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, the Masai Mara National Reserve forms Africa’s most diverse, incredible and most spectacular eco-systems. It stretches 580 sq miles and hosts over 95 species of mammals and over 570 recorded species of birds. It is the northern-most section of the Mara-Serengeti ecosystem, which covers some 9,700 sq mi in Tanzania and Kenya.

The Masai Mara is named in honor of the Maasai people (the ancestral inhabitants of the area) and their description of the area when looked at from afar: Mara, which is Maa (Maasai language) for “spotted,” an apt description for the circles of trees, scrub, savanna, and cloud shadows that mark the area.

It is globally famous for its exceptional population of lions, leopards and cheetahs, and the annual migration of zebra, Thomson’s gazelle, and wildebeest to and from the Serengeti every year from July to October, known as the Great Migration.

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