The Maasai Mara National Reserve is world famous for the Great Migration of gnus and other small animals that travel from Tanzania for days during the months of July – October. I won’t refer to general details, as they are easy to find on the web and the official Maasai Mara park page. I will mostly focus on my personal experience of this amazing phenomenon of the migration through the Mara river, that apparently you have to be very lucky to enjoy to the fullest.
While the animals are moving from one country to the other, the famous “crossing” takes place mostly through the Mara river. And that was our main destination of our full day safari, on our second day in the park. On our way to a specific point of the river, where a “crossing” was in progress, we were watching countless herds of gnus, zebras and antelopes, which had just arrived to Kenya from Tanzania. Some of them were just resting sparsely around the huge plains of the park, while others were walking one after the other, looking for the right place to stay away from the wild predators. The sight was really impressing, as they were walking like in a parade, forming long black lines in the dry gold landscape of the savanna.
A herd of zebras and wildebeest is ready to cross the Mara river
Once we arrived at the river, we had just missed the “crossing” of a herd of gnus and zebras that were running like crazy away from the crocodiles that live and prey in the river. The truth is that we saw a crocodile having his lunch and the carcass of a zebra sinking slowly in the water. There were lots of other herds around, waiting for the right moment to cross the river, so we just stayed inside our vehicle waiting as well. Exiting the vehicle is forbidden at this part of the river, so we had to watch everything, and take photos of course, from a distance.
The river was full of hippos with their calves, both banks were full of gnus, antelopes and zebras and everything was on the move. We were all waiting impatiently inside our vehicles having already the machines turned off, for the great crossing. Just right the moment when, the gnus and zebras started to gather in a place and began descending the banks quickly, one by one. The crossing has just started! (large photo above).
Our excitement unfortunately didn’t last that long as we were out of luck one more time…some drivers turned on the machines and tried to approach the banks earlier than they should, the animals got scared by the noise, turned around and abandoned their effort…. According to our driver, that happens quite often. Some drivers turn on the vehicles previous to at least half of the herd descend to the river, the animals get scared, return to the initial point and quit the crossing. We stayed there waiting a lot for the herd to try again, but the animals had already split up to the opposite side of the river, so we had to either wait for another herd or leave. And as we were all starving, we decided to go.
Today’s safari would be a full day, meaning, since we had left our lodge in the morning, we would wander around the park looking for animals until dusk. We had already taken our lunch box from our lodge and now our driver should find a safe shadow place to park. Well, we reached an open place, suitable to keep an eye out for animals and predators, found an acacia tree for shadow and finally we got out of the car, after so many hours. The view was actually unbelievable! We were surrounded by dozens of gnus and zebras, either walking or feeding without paying any attention to us. There were some more vehicles around as well, but the distance to the next acacia was long, so we were just us with the wild animals at that side of the plains!!
After having our lunch together with the gnus close to us, we headed to the river once more in case we had more luck on our side this time. Unfortunately, the animals had already left the river and there wasn’t any other sign of potential crossing at that moment, so we had to choose either to stay and wait again or continue our wander around the park. It was unfortunately our last day at the Maasai Mara reserve and apparently you need more than 2 days that we could possibly spend, in order to be sure that you will watch everything in the right way.
Having lunch surrounded by the wild animals was one of a lifetime experience
Watching the zebras and gnus after crossing the river
And so we abandoned the effort… however, the park saved a great surprise for us!!
We might have not enjoyed the “crossing” to the fullest, but a wonderful cheetah would compensate us later…