6 Day Masai Mara Budget Safari

6 Day Masai Mara Budget Safari Itinerary

Day 1

On arrival at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, you will be met by our local guide and transferred to the Eka Hotel in Nairobi (or similar) for an overnight stay.

Eka Hotel is a modern, contemporary hotel conveniently located between Jomo Kenyatta and Wilson airports. The hotel offers easy access to Nairobi's most popular attractions, such as Nairobi National Park, the Karen Blixen Museum, and the Giraffe Center. If you'd like to spend more than one night in Nairobi to take in some of the local attractions, we can arrange that.

Eka Hotel has an excellent restaurant, bar, coffee shop, gym, swimming pool and wellness centre. Dinner is not included, but you can enjoy dinner at the hotel restaurant or any of the nearby local restaurants (the hotel is opposite the NextGen shopping mall with a variety of restaurant options)

Day 2

After an early breakfast in Nairobi (included in the price), we depart for the Masai Mara, Kenya's premier safari destination and home to the highest density of wildlife in the world. We head to our rustic safari camp, Basecamp Masai Mara, on the banks of the Talek River. During the scenic drive to the Mara, you'll have plenty of time to discuss your day-to-day itinerary and game-viewing expectations with your guide.

We arrive at Basecamp Masai Mara at lunchtime. After lunch, we enjoy our first afternoon game drive in the Maasai Mara National Reserve. We can expect to see elephants, giraffes, zebra, wildebeest, topi, Grant's gazelle, Thomson's gazelle and a variety of other wildlife species. Predator sightings are always special, and surprisingly common in the Mara. We return to camp around sunset. Dinner in the camp restaurant overlooking the Talek River and the African plains beyond is a magical experience.

You will stay in one of 17 spacious canvas and mosquito-screened eco-tents resting beneath thatched roofs on wooden platforms facing the Talek River. Each rustic en-suite eco-tent has a bio-flush toilet, a solar-heated, open-air safari shower, and a private balcony. The trees in the surrounding forest are home to monkeys and various beautiful birds.

Days 3 to 5

The Masai Mara National Reserve is most famous for the Great Wildebeest Migration, which can usually be witnessed between July and September when the herds cross from Tanzania into Kenya. However, even outside of migration season, there is plenty of resident game, including the Big Five (elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard), resident herds of wildebeest and zebra, giraffe, cheetah, and many other species to be seen.

Hippos and giant crocodiles are abundant in the Mara River. Wandering herds of elephants traverse the grassy savannas, accompanied by eland, topi, Thomson's gazelles, and many other grazing animals. The iconic vistas and abundant wildlife found here make the Mara one of the world's best safari destinations and a photographer's dream location. For the next three days, we will explore all the Mara has to offer on fully guided game drives.

Our game drive times are flexible. We might go out on morning and afternoon game drives, returning to camp for lunch. Or we can take a picnic lunch and stay out all day to cover a bigger area and see more of the reserve. The Masai Mara National Reserve covers an area of 1,510 square km (or 583 square miles), and together with the Mara Triangle, it is by far the most visited game reserve in Kenya.

The Mara is an attractive all-year-round safari destination with two rainy seasons - the long rains from March to May and the short rains from October to December, which include some dramatic cloud formations and thunderstorms.