Natural wonders: a day in the life of a Maasai Mara tour leader

In this video we travel to Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara game reserve, to experience a typical day in the life of local tour guide Moses Masoi.

Set at nearly 2,000m above sea level, the Maasai Mara is a great wedge of undulating grassland in the remote, sparsely inhabited southwest of Kenya, contiguous with the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.

The reserve is named in honour of the Maasai people, the ancestral inhabitants of the area, who migrated here from the Nile Basin. “Mara” means “spotted” in the local Maasai language, due to the many short, bushy trees which dot the landscape here.

As one of the most famous and important wildlife conservation and wilderness areas in Africa, the Maasai Mara is world-renowned for its populations of lions, African leopards, cheetahs and African bush elephants. The nature reserve also features in the annual wildebeest migration.

Nevertheless, given that the Mara is the most visited wildlife area in Kenya, the balance between rising tourist numbers and wildlife can’t be maintained indefinitely. It is sobering to remembering that off-road driving kills the protective cover of vegetation and creates dust bowls that spread through natural wind and water erosion, becoming muddy quagmires in the rains.

View the original video here.

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