The Maasai Mara

The Maasai Mara is the northern end of the Serengeti's grass — fifteen hundred square kilometres of Kenya's Narok county, a reserve since 1961, named for the Maasai and for the word they use for the way the acacias spot the plain — and it is where the Great Migration comes to drink: from July to October a million and a half wildebeest and the zebra with them cross the Mara river, and the crossings, with the crocodiles waiting and the banks collapsing, are the most watched hour in African wildlife. But the Mara is not only its four months: it has the densest lions on the continent — the Marsh pride of Musiara, made famous by a television camera —, cheetah on the termite mounds, leopard along the Talek, elephant, buffalo, and, in the western third across the river, the Mara Triangle under the Oloololo escarpment, quieter and better run; and north of the reserve the community conservancies — Naboisho, Mara North, Olare Motorogi — where the Maasai landowners lease their grass to a few camps, the vehicles are counted, and the game drives go on after dark.

The traveller flies from Nairobi's Wilson airport in forty-five minutes to one of the Mara's airstrips, or drives five or six hours by Narok, and gives it three or four nights: two in the reserve for the river and the big herds — a dawn drive to a crossing point and the patience to wait, because the wildebeest cross when they cross; a picnic under a balanite; the sunset with the balloons coming down — and one or two in a conservancy for the night drives, the walking, and a Maasai guide who grew up on the ground; a balloon at first light over the plain, expensive and worth it once; a visit to a manyatta arranged through the camp; and, everywhere, the discipline of the good camps — one vehicle at a sighting, engines off.

The Guide's honesty: the Mara in migration season is the busiest place in wild Africa — the crossings can draw fifty vehicles, and the traveller who wants the plain to themself goes in February, or to the conservancies, or to the Triangle; the reserve's fees are paid per day and are not small; the black cotton soil closes tracks in the rains; and the Maasai villages arranged for tourists are what they are — the honest way in is a guide from the community and a conservancy that pays them; the reward, from the first zebra at the airstrip to the lion walking past the vehicle at dusk, is the safari that every other safari is measured against, which is why the Guide keeps this page at the front of the continent's shelf.