Masai Mara Game Reserve Off The Beaten Path

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On our third day of Game viewing and just after we had seen a lion out in the open , walking down majestically and crossing our way , elan and elegance marking each step of the way we were thoroughly happy and contented

We were driving when we saw one of the schools of the Masai Mara. With curiosity and the hunger to know more about the Mara people and its young generation, and furthermore my wife being an education worker for the last 15 years ,we drove to the school in order to meet and chat with the school authorities.

JACOB JNKUMUM@YAHOO.COM
LOIGERO PRIMARY SCHOOL
PO BOX : 155
NAROK – KENYA
+254728686167

This school runs on Aid from outside and thus we promised that we would be writing about the good work that they were doing and let the whole world know.
Expect someone to provide a helping hand.

My wife took a quick Class for Std VI and I joined in a bit too. It was fun to chat with the young Masai students and found that some of themhad a hunger to know more about the world. They started to ask questions to know more of us . It was nice to spend an hour with these little ones.

If you are there kindly pay them a visit and if possible something to help them in their quest.

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A trip to a Masai Village is a must Activity when you are in Masai Mara.
They charge you an Average of USD25 per head, but this can be negotiated a little.

Kindly remeber : ALL PROCEEDINGS FROM THIS FEE GOES TO THE SCHOOLS THAT THE MASAIS HAVE BUILT FOR THE PROGRESS OF THEIR COMMUNITY.

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This was a Treat : a Trip to the Masai Village.
We spent a couple of hours there , dancing with the Masais, hearing about their life and meeting one very smart and english speaking educated Masai . NOAH MEOLI KAAI he has now been my friend and have called me on my return to Dubai.

We plan to put up a program together called something like :
Back to the Basics: Live a day with the Masais.
Anyone interested can mail me at : samit.bhattacharya@yahoo.com for more details.

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Your guide is angling for a big tip (around £10, 1000 kenyan shillings). His goal is to show you the Big Five. Elephant, Cape Buffalo, Rhino, Leopard and Cheetah.

If you get to see a leopard, you are incredibly lucky and this is all due to your guide's local knowledge. Leopards have favourite trees. They sleep in them and rest in them, also hunt from them. This particular leopard was off hunting anyway, we just hurried him along.

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A Japanese couple in love were on the safari car. They had decided to take their honeymoon off the beaten path, and not to Hawaii or Saipan as many Japanese do. They had also climbed the Kilimanjaro mountain in Tanzania before they came to Kenya.

A pleasure to meet you. Thanks for the Japanese biscuits! :-)

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Considering the huge number of tourists that visit Masai Mara, there isn't exactly much in the way of "Off the Beaten Path" items here. Indeed, because game drive operators are required to stay on the established roads and dirt tracks, it could be said that it is literally required that you stay on the beaten path.

For various reasons, it is required that people leave the park at 6:30PM. Reasons for this include that it is much easier to accidentally run into certain wildlife that become invisible at night. This is a particular problem with elephants and hippos because their skin does not reflect light from auto headlights very well at all, and a collision with one of them can be very bad for the occupants of the vehicle as usually it only makes the animal angry at the vehicle, while significant damage can be done to the vehicle - particularly after the animal is angry at it.

In any event, no African game park that I have heard of allows the public into the park after dark. Kruger Park in South Africa conducts evening and night game drives, but only with an experienced and armed park ranger.

If you stay at a place such as Keekorok, or even Sopa, you don't necessarily leave the park. Instead, you just move to a lodge that is located inside the park. This allows you to do game drives quite a bit later in the evening than those who do not stay in the park, as you do not have to drive all the way to an entrance gate and then all the way back to the place you are staying. While it is true that at Sopa lodge you do have to drive to an entrance gate to get to the lodge, you don't actually have to pass through the gate. Instead, you just travel onto a different road branch. Such places as Keekorok are located well inside the park, and permit much later stays than even Sopa lodge would allow.

Staying late in the park allows viewing of evening wildlife as it starts to become active. Our best lion sighting was in the very late evening, just as we were leaving the park and the sun was just above the horizon. A small pride of lions had woken up and was just starting to hunt. If we had stayed somewhere outside the park, we would not have seen this at all, as we would have had to leave the park much earlier.

In addition to the various wildlife sightings, you may also get to see some very nice sunsets as well. There are no overhead power lines to block the view, very few jet trails to make the sunset unnatural, and very few objects of any size that can get in your way. Also, the tropical climate encourages some neat cloud formations that can add quite a bit to the appearance of a sunset.

I have put this under "Off the Beaten Path" because after about 5 PM we only saw about 5 other game drive vehicles in the park. It was quite obvious that a number of people had to leave the park quite early to return to their night lodging, and in doing so they missed some nice stuff. Yes, it is more expensive to stay in one of the game lodges inside the park. However, compared to the overall cost of actually coming to Africa, the additional cost is probably well worth it, considering that the entire point of coming to a place like Masai Mara is to see wildlife and native African landscape.

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This is the infamous Mara River - the place where each year, millions of Wildebeest, Zebras, Impalas and countless other hoofed animals make their perilous crossings on the way to the "greener pastures" between Tanzania and the Kenya Plains.

Knowing nature's course, which has been unchanging throughout milleneum, hungry crocodiles await the creatures which are driven by hunger and the need to survive.
It is also the best place in Kenya to see the Hippo - Africa's most dangerous animal.

Each year countless people are attacked by Hippos who have either wondered out of the water to their grazing grounds (they're hervibores) and an unsuspecting tourist or even guide has gotten between the huge beast and the river.
For this reason, the Mara River lookout is always patrolled by National Park officers, complete with very menacing looking guns and only they can escort you to and around the river.

For the best vantage points, go down to the river's edge (again, with a guide who is knowlegeable in knowing where the hippos lie) and around the naturally worn crossings to the top of the hill.
The sight of these magnificent animals all lazily basking in the sun or just under the water's surface was one of our favorites.

On the way to the Masai Masa Game Reserve, you will see many Maasai herders and their cattle. They will be dressed in their traditional red cloth. As I'm told, they are dressed in bright red to warn the lions and other big cats of their presence