Map of Kenya › Where is the Mara
Where Is the Maasai Mara? Location, Map and How to Get There
Quick answer: the Maasai Mara lies in Kenya’s far southwestern corner, within Narok County, roughly 270 km from Nairobi and hard up against the Tanzanian border. The rest of this page unpacks what the map actually tells you: the Mara is nothing more than the Kenyan half of the wider Serengeti ecosystem, a single stretch of grassland carrying one border and two place names.
The Mara on the map
The gold outline marks the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya; the green area beneath it is Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. There is no fence between the two, only the Sand River and a shift in country. The dark pin marks Narok, the town most travellers pass through on the way in.
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You can still use the guide and tables below, or open the area on Google Maps.
Finding the Mara on the Map
| From | Distance | How |
|---|---|---|
| Nairobi | 270 km | 5-6 hours by road, or a 45-minute flight out of Wilson |
| Narok town | 130 km | 2-2.5 hours; your last stop for fuel and supplies |
| Kisumu / Lake Victoria | ~250 km | 5-6 hours via Bomet |
| Serengeti (Tanzania) | Shares a border with the reserve | No crossing point for tourists inside the parks themselves; you either fly across or drive round via Isebania |
The reserve itself lies at roughly 1,500-1,900 m elevation, which catches out visitors expecting tropical warmth: for most of the year the mornings are cold enough to need a fleece.
Same Wilderness, Two Names
Ignore the political line and follow the wildlife instead, and the Mara-Serengeti reveals itself as one continuous system covering about 25,000 km². Wildebeest move across that border twice yearly without a passport in sight. People cannot follow so freely: there is no tourist checkpoint linking the two parks directly, so seeing both means either a short flight between them or a long loop by road through Isebania. Most visitors settle for the Kenyan side alone, and from August through October the herds are typically on Mara ground, a pattern our migration map tracks month by month.
Making the Trip
For the finer points, gates and airstrips included, we have dedicated pages: the road journey is mapped out leg by leg on Nairobi to Maasai Mara, while the reserve’s internal layout, conservancies and all, sits on the Maasai Mara map. To see how the Mara fits among Kenya’s other parks, the Map of Kenya is the place to start.
Where is the Mara: questions
What country holds the Maasai Mara?
Kenya. It sits in the country’s southwestern tip, inside Narok County, right against the Tanzanian border where the identical grassland carries on as the Serengeti.
Is the Maasai Mara technically part of the Serengeti?
In ecological terms, yes: they form one unbroken system of roughly 25,000 km2. On paper, no: the Mara falls under Kenya as a national reserve, while the Serengeti is a Tanzanian national park.
What’s the closest town to the Maasai Mara?
Narok, roughly 130 km from Sekenani Gate, is the last stop with proper fuel, banking and supplies. Smaller centres such as Talek sit right at the reserve gates themselves.
Is it possible to cross straight from the Mara into the Serengeti?
Not in a straight line; the protected areas share no tourist border post. Crossing means a flight between the two or a road detour via the Isebania border.
Now you know where it sits
Next comes the harder question: when to travel and which side of the reserve to base yourself on. Answering that is what we do all day. Give us your travel month and we will build the rest of the plan around it.
Start Planning Your SafariPark and reserve boundaries © OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed under ODbL. Basemap © OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Satellite imagery © Esri. Terrain tiles by Mapzen and AWS Open Data.
