Mara North Conservancy

Mara North Conservancy is the largest of the Mara conservancies covered on this site, a block of roughly 29,170 hectares of Maasai-owned land on the north-western edge of the Maasai Mara National Reserve. It was set up in January 2009 as a not-for-profit partnership between landowning families and the tourism businesses operating on their land, and it is the one conservancy in the group that publishes its game-drive rules in full.

What Separates Mara North from the Other Conservancies

All five conservancies run the same basic arrangement. Maasai families lease their land into a block, camps pay a fee per guest night that funds the leases, day visitors are kept out, vehicle numbers are capped at sightings, and night drives and guided walks are permitted. That contrast with the reserve is explained on the Maasai Mara page and is not repeated here.

What is specific to Mara North is scale and a rulebook. It is the biggest of the five by a wide margin, with the most landowners and the most tourism partners. It has no published cap on the total number of beds, which is the single clearest difference between it and Olare Motorogi or Mara Naboisho, both of which state a maximum. What it does publish, and the others do not, is a detailed set of rules governing how a vehicle behaves once it reaches an animal.

The landowner figures genuinely disagree. The conservancies association lists 783; the conservancy’s own history page says over 1,000. Both are given above rather than picking one, because the association’s numbers are the ones that let the five conservancies be compared on the same basis.

The Game Drive Rules Mara North Actually Publishes

Most conservancy marketing says vehicle numbers are limited and leaves it there. Mara North sets out what the limit is and what happens when it is reached, which makes it possible to know in advance what a sighting will look like.

• No more than five vehicles at a sighting. Anything beyond that waits 100 metres off.
• Ten minutes each, then give way to the vehicles waiting, except for the vehicle that found the animal.
• Stay 20 metres back. If an animal stands, becomes restless or moves off, the vehicle is too close.
• Stay on the track. Leaving it is permitted only for the Big Five, by the shortest route, still keeping 20 metres.
• Night drives only in designated areas, red filters on the lamps, back in camp by 10pm.
• Cubs are not viewed until they are four months old.
• A 40 kilometre per hour speed limit across the conservancy.

Five vehicles is a cap, not a promise of solitude. It is a great deal better than an uncapped river crossing inside the reserve, and it is more generous than the practical position in the smaller conservancies to the east, where there are simply fewer beds and therefore fewer vehicles on the ground to begin with. A traveller who wants to see a leopard with nobody else present should be looking at Ol Kinyei or Olderkesi, not here.

The Country Itself and Where the Cats Are

The conservancy runs from the reserve boundary north-west into hill country, and the mix of open grassland, acacia woodland and broken rocky ground is what supports the predator viewing it is known for. Leopard Gorge, in the middle of the conservancy, is the setting used repeatedly in the wildlife documentary series filmed across this part of the Mara over several decades, and it is the feature most guests arrive asking about.

Several of the conservancies in this group describe themselves as holding one of the highest lion densities anywhere. Mara North says it, Naboisho’s partners say it and Olare Motorogi says something similar about big cats generally. Three adjoining blocks of the same ecosystem cannot all be the densest, and no independent figure separating them was found. The honest position is that this is excellent predator country and that choosing between neighbouring conservancies on lion numbers is choosing on marketing copy.

Because the conservancy shares a boundary with the reserve, the migrating herds that move into the northern Mara in the middle of the year reach it. The river crossings themselves happen inside the reserve, on the Mara River, so a stay here during the migration usually involves a drive into the reserve on at least one day, and that is a separate entry fee paid to Narok County.

Riding, Walking and Night Drives in Mara North

Three of the twelve tourism partners are riding outfits, which is unusual. Very little of the greater Mara can be ridden, and the concentration of riding operations here makes Mara North one of the two or three places in Kenya where a serious rider can spend several days in the saddle among plains game. How the activity works nationally, including what the ability requirement really means, is covered on the horseback safaris page.

Guided walking safaris and night game drives both run, the latter under the red-filter and 10pm rules above. Maasai cultural experiences are arranged through the camps with the landowning families whose land the camp sits on, which is a more direct arrangement than the equivalent outside the conservancy system. Wildlife photography benefits from the ten-minute rule in a way that is easy to underestimate, because it means a vehicle in the queue will get its turn rather than being shut out by whoever arrived first.

Getting There and How Long to Stay

Access is by light aircraft from Wilson Airport in Nairobi to one of the airstrips serving the northern Mara, then a transfer with the camp, or by road through Narok and up the western side. Camps meet guests at the strip; which strip is decided by the camp, not the guest. The fly-in safaris guide covers luggage limits and the practicalities.

Two nights is thin here because the conservancy is large and the driving distances inside it are real. Three nights lets a camp work more than one corner of it. Travellers combining a conservancy with the reserve itself usually split nights between the two rather than driving in and out daily, and travellers who want the quietest possible sightings tend to pair Mara North with one of the smaller eastern conservancies rather than with the reserve.

Where Mara North Sits Among Its Neighbours

Running roughly west to east along the northern side of the reserve: Mara North, then Olare Motorogi on the reserve’s north-eastern boundary with a published cap of 94 beds, then Mara Naboisho behind it with a cap of 150, then Ol Kinyei further east and off the reserve boundary altogether. Olderkesi sits on the opposite corner, in the south-east against the Tanzanian border.

Mara North is the choice for a traveller who wants the conservancy rules, riding, and a large area to range over, and who is willing to accept more beds in the block than the smaller conservancies carry. For a much smaller footprint, the eastern conservancies do it better.

Mara North Conservancy Questions