Mara Plains is a luxurious safari camp located on the northern border of the renowned Masai Mara Reserve in a private conservancy with low tourist densities and superb wildlife viewing.

The camp's location within the private, 52-square-mile (134-sq-km) Olare Motorogi Conservancy means that guests are able to enjoy the abundant and diverse wildlife of the Masai Mara without experiencing a crowded wildlife sighting, like those that can sometimes occur in the neighboring Masai Mara National Reserve. Game drives from the camp also have access to Mara North Conservancy, another private area located directly to the west, covering 100 square miles (250 sq kms).

With a relatively small number of safari camps in these two, massive, private conservancies, guests staying at Mara Plains Camp enjoy a truly exclusive safari experience. Read more about Olare Motorogi Conservancy below.

The camp is set within a small, riparian forest along the banks of the meandering Ntiakatiak River, within walking distance of the national reserve border, which lies just to the south. During the peak Great Migration months (generally mid-July thru October, read more below), guests staying at Mara Plains Camp may want to spend time in the National Reserve to see river crossings or just to explore a bit more, so full-day safaris to the reserve are offered.

Activities at Mara Plains Camp focus on game drives in custom-designed, open 4x4 vehicles to see the diverse wildlife. Those looking for additional adventures can pre-book an early morning, hot-air balloon flight above the Masai Mara and get an incredible, bird's-eye view of this spectacular setting from above (highly recommended). Cultural experiences with the local Maasai people are also offered.

Mara Plains Camp offers six, luxurious, wood-and-canvas guest suites, one of which is a two-bedroom suite (the Jahazi Suite) suitable for two couples traveling together or a family of up to 5 guests. Each bedroom includes a complimentary DSLR camera and lenses and a pair of high-quality binoculars for guests to use during their stay.

The open-plan tented suites are spacious, with huge, ornate, Zanzibari doors leading to the bedroom, small lounge, and an outdoor deck that includes comfy seating and private dining space. The Jahazi Suite also has its own private pool and a dedicated safari guide and vehicle. The suites include plumbed, en-suite facilities with a luxurious, copper tub, and an indoor shower.

The main camp area is a spacious, tented structure built atop a raised deck and reminiscent of a luxury safari from colonial times, with a lounge, library, indoor dining space, wine storage, bar, and interactive kitchen. The main area opens onto a deck built from reclaimed teak, railroad ties with outdoor dining space and steps leading down to a front lawn with a campfire. The Mara Plains Spa offers wellness treatments for some pampering between safaris.

Mara Plains Camp is owned and operated by Great Plains Conservation, an organization whose mission is to blend sustainable tourism with the conservation of wildlife environments. Great Plains is headed by the husband-and-wife team of Beverly and Dereck Joubert, who are well known to wildlife enthusiasts for their outstanding films, most of which have been created in conjunction with National Geographic.

Great Plains use the term “Conservation Tourism” to describe what they do. They define it as the use of quality-led tourism experiences that are environmentally sound, with the benefits going specifically into making the conservation of an area viable and sustainable. 

The Great Plains model takes stressed and threatened environments, surrounds them with compassionate protection and intelligent, sustainable management, and funds them with sensitive, low-volume, low-impact, tourism.

Mara Plains is one of only a few Relais & Châteaux properties in Kenya.

Great Plains are one of Africa's leading safari operators and they strive to minimize energy consumption at all their camps. The camp was constructed using only repurposed hardwoods and all of the camp’s electricity comes from its solar-power system.

Mara Plains Camp is at the top in terms of its environmental credentials and careful appointments. Strict eco-friendly environmental standards are maintained so that no harmful chemicals or waste is allowed to enter the pristine ecosystem of the Masai Mara.

About the Masai Mara

The Greater Masai Mara includes the Masai Mara National Reserve as well as numerous private conservancies that border the reserve. The national reserve and bordering conservancies are often collectively referred to simply as "the Mara".

The Greater Masai Mara is part of a much larger ecosystem that includes vast protected areas directly to the south in Tanzania, including Serengeti National Park, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and other reserves that together make up the Greater Serengeti.

The combined Greater Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, which combines the areas described above, covers roughly 15 000 square miles (39 000 sq kms).

The Serengeti-Mara is home to a very large number and diversity of wild animals and is also the location of the well-known "Great Migration" of over 2 million herbivores (read more below). This is arguably Africa's greatest overall wildlife destination.

Wildlife densities in the Greater Masai Mara are some of the highest in Africa, with commonly seen herbivores including blue wildebeest, plains zebra, Thomson's gazelle, topi, Grant's gazelle, hartebeest, giraffe, elephant, buffalo, impala, waterbuck, bush bug, warthog, and many others.

Predators seen often include lion, leopard, spotted hyena, cheetah, serval, and jackal. Hippo and crocodile are found in large numbers in the Mara River.

Masai Mara National Reserve

The national reserve forms the core protected area of the Greater Masai Mara, covering 583 square miles (1 510 sq kms) and officially protected since 1974. The reserve is functionally the same as a national park, with restrictions on off-road driving and open to the public, which includes self-drivers coming for the day, as well as guests staying at one of the accommodations within the reserve (of which there are many).

The Mara Triangle
The Mara River flows southward through the national reserve on its way into Tanzania and eventually into Lake Victoria to the southwest. The river also separates the national reserve into two separately-managed sections: the area to the west of the Mara River is known as the "Mara Triangle", while the area to the east of the river is simply the Mara National Reserve.

The Mara Triangle covers 197 square miles (510 sq kms), which is roughly one-third of the reserve and there are relatively few safari camps in this section, so the number of vehicles and tourists, especially during the peak months when the migration is in present, is much lower in the Triangle section than in the section east of the Mara River.

The Great Migration

One of nature's greatest living spectacles is the Great Migration, a term given to describe the year-long, circular, clockwise march of over two million herbivores across the Masai Mara and Serengeti grasslands. The migration animals are made up entirely of two species: the blue wildebeest and the plains zebra (the majority of which are wildebeests).

The migrating herds follow their instincts to seek out fresh grazing and so the migration is ongoing, with the herds ever moving and taking a full year to complete a cycle across the Masai Mara and Serengeti. The animals move not as one herd, but as tens of thousands of animals in multiple herds of various sizes and spread out for many miles as they move.

The wildebeests and zebras take advantage of strongly seasonal conditions, spending the wet season (November through May) on the plains of Tanzania's Serengeti and the dry season in Kenya's Masai Mara. The wildebeests give birth between January and March on the short grass plains in Tanzania.

The timing of the migration is rarely ever the same year-to-year, as local conditions influence grass growth and as such, the location of the bulk of there animals cannot be known precisely. Rains and other unknown conditions seem to direct the timing of the migration, but generally, it is known within several weeks when the animals will be in a general location.

The migration typically crosses north into Kenya and the Masai Mara beginning sometime in mid- or late-July and they spend around three months in the Greater Masai Mara. The herds head back south into Tanzania sometime in October.

Although many visitors time their visit to the Masai Mara to coincide with the Migration, the Greater Mara has superb wildlife viewing outside of the migration period. This is because it is only the wildebeests and zebras that migrate, the rest of the animals, including the major predators like lion, leopard, spotted hyena, and cheetah, as well as all the other herbivores, including springbok, gazelles, elephant, topi, hartebeest, and many others, do not migrate.

A popular aspect of experiencing the Great Migration is observing a herd as it crosses the Mara River, which requires animals swimming through waters inhabited by large Nile crocodiles that wait for a chance to get their first substantial meal in many months.

The dramatic river crossings (which take place along the Mara River in both Kenya and Tanzania) are certainly a spectacle and not for the faint of heart, with many of the wildebeest and zebras taken by crocs or succumbing to drowning or trampling in the chaos.

The best chances for seeing a Kenya Mara River crossing are during July and August, when the crocodiles are still very hungry.

Mara Conservancies

Over the past two decades, nearly all of the land situated surrounding the Masai Mara National Reserve has been organized into protected and self-managed reserves by various tribes of the Maasai people that own the land. The result has been a great expansion of wildlife tourism and the construction of safari tourism camps and lodges.

Note that some of the conservancies use the name 'group ranch' instead of conservancy.

Many of these conservancies, particularly those that directly border the national reserve, offer wildlife viewing that is even just as good, and arguably even better than inside the reserve, primarily because the conservancies are only available to tourists staying at a camp within the conservancy and unlike the national reserve itself, are not accessible to self-drive day visitors.

The exclusivity of the conservancies means that there are fewer game drive vehicles and a far lower density of tourists. Further, the number of vehicles allowed at any specific animal sighting (such as a lion kill or a leopard in a tree) is managed to prevent the oft-seen situation where an animal, such as a cheetah, is surrounded by 20 or more cars in the national reserve.

Staying in one of the Mara Conservancies offers guests the opportunity to have an exclusive game-viewing experience (due to the reduced tourist numbers compared to inside the national reserve), while still allowing day visits into the reserve proper (entrance fee required). A day visit into the reserve might allow seeing a major wildebeest/zebra river crossing during the migration months. Guided safari walks (during the day) and game drives past sunset are another option inside the conservancies that is not permitted inside the national reserve.

Olare Motorogi Conservancy

The Olare Motorogi Conservancy (OMC) spans 52 square miles (134 sq kms) of superb safari land, bordering the Mara Reserve to the north and lying just east of Mara North Conservancy. OMC was formed in 2006 as a merging of the Olare Orok Conservancy and the Motorogi Conservancy. OMC's habitat includes the lower valleys of two rivers, the Ntiakatiak and the Olare Orok, beautiful Masai Mara grasslands, riparian forest, and large areas of Acacia woodland.

OMC offers superb game viewing all year, but especially during the annual migration, when tens of thousands of wildebeests and zebras arrive during August and September. A smaller wildebeest migration that moves between OMC and the Loita Plains to the east arrives in OMC around March/April.

There are plenty of predators, including several prides and a high density of lion, numerous cheetah and leopard, and a strong population of spotted hyena. Plains game like topi, Thomson's and Grant's gazelle, giraffe, eland, and elephant are also here in good numbers. Vehicle numbers are restricted at wildlife sightings.