About Masaimara.co.ke

A good safari has very little to do with hotel star ratings. It depends on the tracker sitting next to you, on whether the vehicle can get through black cotton clay after rain, and on how much of the land and the Maasai communities who look after it you actually get to know.

Masaimara.co.ke  is run by licensed Kenyan safari planners who work with Maasai trackers from Narok County. Lead guide David Njunge heads the field team. On this site you will find multi-park price tables, current park fees and plain write-ups of camps and lodges, all written by people who work in the Mara.

The site exists to cut out reseller markups and automated booking engines. When you book with us you are dealing with licensed Kenyan safari planners and Maasai trackers who live and work in the Mara, not with a call centre.

Whether you want to be at the Mara River during the migration or spend a quiet week tracking a leopard in a community conservancy, you get straight advice, realistic timings and prices that don’t move after you’ve paid a deposit.

How We Work

Planning a safari here involves a lot of logistics, changing gate fees and roads that don’t behave. Four things we hold to:

1. You deal with the ground team directly

Most global booking platforms resell safari packages through two or three layers of international brokers. Booking with our operations desk means you talk to the people in Kenya who are running your trip. If a flight shifts, the schedule gets fixed the same day. You also avoid the commission that aggregators add on top, typically 15–25%, and the money goes to the drivers, mechanics and lodge staff doing the work.

2. Proper 4x4s, and evacuation cover on every trip

The access tracks and seasonal river drifts in the Mara are not minibus territory.

Every overland safari runs in a 4×4 Safari Land Cruiser with a full-length pop-up roof, heavy-duty suspension and a spare tyre. Inside there are charging sockets for cameras and phones, a cool box for drinking water, and binoculars for guests who don’t bring their own.

Every guest travelling with us is covered by AMREF Flying Doctors emergency evacuation for the duration of the safari.

3. Park fees handled before you reach the gate

Park entries in Kenya are now cashless, and the Mara has its own system separate from the national parks. Masai Mara National Reserve fees are collected by Narok County through the Mara Conservation Fees portal, not by KWS. Fees for KWS parks on a multi-park circuit (Lake Nakuru, Amboseli, Hell’s Gate, Tsavo, Nairobi National Park) go through the KWS eCitizen portal. Conservancy fees are set by each conservancy and are built into your camp rate.

We pay all of these before you set off, and we show you the receipts. Mara reserve tickets run 6 AM to 6 PM on the day of entry, and you need to be out of the reserve by 10 AM on your departure day or the system charges another full day. We plan around both.

4. Conservancies that pay the landowners

Wildlife survives here because the Maasai families who own the land earn from it. We build itineraries around properties affiliated with the Maasai Mara Wildlife Conservancies Association (MMWCA). When you stay in Olare Motorogi, Mara North, Naboisho or Ol Kinyei, a large share of your nightly rate goes into monthly lease payments to the Maasai landowners. There are more than 14,000 of them across the MMWCA conservancies.