As the northern extension of the Serengeti plains, the Masai Mara eco-system sustains some of Africa's largest and most varied wildlife populations.

The word Mara means 'spotted' or “mottled” in the Masai language. Some say the Masai named it thus because of the patchy landscape - acacia trees and thorn thickets lend patches of colour to the otherwise uniform-looking plains.

Others believe the Mara is named after the speckled appearance of its vast plains when the millions of migrating wildebeest, zebra and gazelle arrive to rest here.

The Masai Mara and the adjoining Loita Plains of Kenya form the northern part of the even greater Serengeti- Masai Mara ecosystem - about 25,000km² of land. In the Masai language Serengeti means “wide or seemingly never ending plains”.

The long distance to the country's main urban centers poses a difference that allows the Masai Mara National Reserve to keep one of the features which is becoming today an oddity in African parks: wildlife roams in complete freedom, without fences or other obstacles around.

The Masai Mara National Reserve is about 1530 km². The Masai Mara is bounded by the Serengeti Park of Tanzania to the south, the Siria escarpment (also called Oloololo escarpment) to the west and Masai pastoral ranches to the north, east and west. The Sand river, Talek river and Mara river are the major rivers draining the reserve. Note that there which is becoming today an oddity in African parks: wildlife roams in complete freedom, without fences or other obstacles around. Animals make no notice of the borders drawn on the papers, not only those which split Kenya from Tanzania but the limits of the protected area as well.

The Masai Mara offer a great diversity of different natural habitats for the wildlife: the vast open plains covered with tall red oat grass and scattered acacia trees, the rolling hills covered with short grass and interspersed with rocky inselbergs, the patches of woodland, the extensive marshes and swampy areas, the mighty Mara river with its dense riverine forests…

The western border is the Oloololo Escarpment or of the Rift Valley, the Siria escarpment , and wildlife tends to be most concentrated here, as the swampy ground means that access to water is always good and tourist disruption is minimal.