When one watches The Lion King, it’s easy to romanticize and imagine that life in the savannah is peaceful and all animals live in harmony, amongst themselves and with Nature. In real life, you get to understand that they call it “the wild” for a reason.
Doing a safari in the Maasai Mara, Kenya, you get to be as close to wildlife as most regular human beings are bound to get. Inside the comfort of a van, you still get pretty close to the animals, while trying to interfere as less as possible with their natural habitat.
Zebras, spotted while approaching the Maasai Mara Reserve
If you are lucky, you might spot a lion eating some bloody meat, which will probably make you feel bad after observing the deers eating some greens 5 minutes earlier. Akuna Matata?! Humm…. not really. At least not for the herbivores!
In the Maasai Mara Reserve, your days as a visitor will revolve around the idea of spotting “The Big Five”. This collective of African animals include the lion, elephant, cape buffalo, rhino and leopard. They are all fairly easy to spot actually (that is how amazing a Kenyan safari is!), but the leopard is the type who likes to play hide and seek. We didn’t have luck this time around, but I’ll take that as an invitation to go back to Africa sometime soon and live another thrilling adventure!
The King of the Jungle
Business as usual in the Maasai Mara
African rhinos
Kenya wildlife safari
With the risk of sounding like a travel agent brochure, let me tell you that doing a safari in a national park with plenty of wildlife like the Maasai Mara is the type of experience everyone should get to live at least once in a lifetime. Observing the animals from up close, one can learn a lot about Human nature!
This video includes footage taken at Masai Mara National Park, Lake Nakuru and Lake Naivasha, all in Kenya.
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Nice blog!! Thanks for sharing with us.
Thanks to you for reading!
Sounds like an awesome adventure!
I never thought it would be so easy to observe the animals from up close! A bit scary too, no?! ;)
Hi Tina!
It is not really scary as you are inside a van. You shouldn’t disturb the animals though… don’t mess with them and they will not mess with you! ;)
Very interesting blog. And good photos too. Do let us know when where in Kenya is this park, how did you go there and the probable itinerary, as I understand for Indians, Kenya has visa on arrival. Thanks dear :)
Hi Suyash,
We traveled to Kenya from Dubai (we were residents there at the time). Although Indians do seem to have visa on arrival, we took the visa in advance, at the airlines office in Dubai (just in case!). It was a very straightforward process: we paid and they put the visa on the passport, on the spot!
Then we traveled to Nairobi and, from there, we hired a tourist service that takes you on a van to the Maasai Mara Reserve (for 2 days) and a few extra days to make it to nearby Lake Nakuru and Lake Naivasha too – this is where you get to see flamingos and hippos! The safari part (everything once you leave Nairobi) is a package: they arrange transportation, accommodation and most meals.
A very recommended trip and I hope you get to do something similar one of these days! :)
The safari looks amazing and I love your photos! It’s incredible how close you’re actually able to get to these animals – must be a major rush!
Thanks Miriam. It was amazing indeed!
We couldn’t believe how close to the animals you actually get – on the first 15 minutes of the safari, we were already next to all these wild creatures!! It was unbelievable and so worth it!
Fabulous! Yet another to-do on the ever expanding travel list!
“the ever expanding travel list”… I know the feeling!! ;)
Can you not make the videos autoplay please. Very inconvenient when working with multiple tabs.
Thanks for the suggestion Vamsee – noted!
Hi Zara,
Wow. This is my dream vacation…and I’ve seen some pretty neat spots in the world.
The images, animals, and rawness of it all, is thrilling. I’m writing these words from Fiji and that’s about the only other place on earth I’d rather be right now. What a shot of the lion. How long did that take, to get that perfect image of him sitting there regally?
I imagine you may see some gory stuff. I watched many natures shows as a kid; hey, it’s nature, so it is what it is, but wow things get brutal on the plains.
Thanks so much for sharing.
I’ll tweet this through Triberr.
Ryan
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your comment. The animals at the Masai Maara were surprisingly picturesque. Even the lion, was just there sitting… almost as if waiting to be photographed. I guess we were just lucky! ;) We didn’t get to see much flesh and blood though.. mostly left-over bones here and there.
Have fun and say HI to Fiji for me!
Can’t wait to get to the Mara–great photos! What a wonderful place.
Thanks Heather.
Let us know how it goes when you finally make it there! :)
I’d love so badly to get to see these fantastic creatures in their own habitat, in the wild and free. In my opinion there is no better way to get to know and understand the animals by observing them in their own environment.
Definitely! I hate zoos and places that keep animals and captivity… but after doing a safari I understand that the behavior of animals in those places vs the wild is very different indeed!
When I initially commented I clicked the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and now every time a remark is added I get four emails with the same comment. Is there any means you’ll be able to take away me from that service? Thanks!