About masaimara.info: an independent guide to Masai Mara, Kenya

What it is, and what it is not

The guide starts from two things every safari plan has: a budget and a number of days. Enter them in the budget finder with your month, and it lists the safaris that fit once the park fees for that month are added. The other pages answer the questions that come next: the month, the fees, where to stay and the way there.

The guide sells nothing itself. A booking happens on the site of a booking partner or of the operator, never here. Where it gives what a safari costs, it is the price the partner listed on the day named beside it, not a price the guide sets. It prints no review scores.

It is also not a source of rules. Park and conservancy fees, entry requirements and closures are set by the bodies named on each page, such as Narok County Government, the Mara Conservancy, the Kenya Wildlife Service and Kenya’s Directorate of Immigration Services, and their word is the one that counts. The pages link to them. The guide is not the website of the Maasai Mara National Reserve, of any conservancy, or of any camp, lodge or tour operator.

Who publishes and edits it

masaimara.info is published and edited by Rainer Lang. He decides what is published and is responsible for it. The guide is independent and unofficial: no park authority, county office, conservancy, camp, lodge or tour operator stands behind it.

Publisher and editor

Rainer Lang

Reach him

Write through the contact form. No email address and no postal address are published.

How the pages are made and kept current

Fees and rules

From the body that sets them: Narok County Government for the reserve, the Mara Conservancy for the Mara Triangle, the Kenya Wildlife Service for the national parks, the conservancies for their own land. A page prints the fee with its year; the document behind it is in the source list at the end of the page.

The migration

Counted from the monthly reports the Mara Conservancy has published since 2001, as the number of seasons in which the herds were recorded in a month. A past season is a likelihood, not a date.

Rain and heat

From the CHIRPS rainfall data of the Climate Hazards Center at UC Santa Barbara and from NASA POWER, as averages for 1991 to 2020.

Safari prices

The price a booking partner listed, with the date it was read.

Maps

Drawn from OpenStreetMap.

Kept current

Every page shows the date it last changed, and a new fee schedule or rule is put into the guide’s shared data, so every page that prints it changes at once.

Corrections

Welcome. If a fee has changed or a page is wrong, say so through the contact form.

The tables behind the pages, from migration seasons and rain by month to the park fee schedules, are free to download and reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0) on the Masai Mara data page. Photographers, map data and typefaces are credited on the photo credits page.

How the guide earns money

The guide earns commissions from booking partners: when you book a safari, a tour or a room through a partner link, the partner pays the guide a share. The partner sets the price; the guide adds nothing to it. Bookable safaris, tours and lodges are linked from the booking sites the guide works with; park authorities, conservancies and official sites are linked without commission, and the guide accepts no payment for coverage. Which links are partner links, and who the partners are, is set out in the affiliate disclosure.

The site sets no cookies. What it does with data is on the privacy page.