Is the Masai Mara in the Serengeti?

When doing the research about the African Safari, you may have come across recommendations that you visit the Masai Mara and the Serengeti. One question that confuses people is whether the Serengeti and the Masai Mara are in the same location and whether the Masai Mara is located within the Serengeti.

The Masai Mara is not in the Serengeti. They are two separate parks located in two different countries. The Serengeti is in Tanzania and the Masai Mara is in Kenya. The two parks, however, are next to each other and share a border and also the Mara River. This proximity to each other is what fuels the confusion.

The Masai Mara vs Serengeti Locations

The Serengeti is located on the eastern border of Tanzania. Conversely, the Masai Mara is located on the southwestern border of Kenya. They border each other and the thing that separates them is the Mara river that also marks the international border between Kenya and Tanzania.

Can I visit the Masai Mara from Serengeti

Visiting the Mara from the Serengeti would be a long journey that is much longer than just crossing the Mara River. To get to the Serengeti from the Mara, you would have two options:

1. Travel back to Nairobi, board a flight to the Tanzanian town of Arusha, then drive to the Serengeti.
2. Drive to the border town of Isibania, make the official crossing for you and your vehicle into Tanzania, then drive to the Serengeti.

The reason for this cumbersome journey is the fact that you will need to pass through an official border for you to legally be in either Tanzania or Kenya.

Should I visit both the Masai Mara and Serengeti

The Serengeti and Masai Mara are fairly similar parks since they are in the same geographic location and both are awesome parks to visit. However, due to the complexity of travelling between the two countries, I would advise you to pick one country and enjoy as much of it as possible. This is because:

1. Visiting both the Mara and Serengeti would require a good budget since it may involve using two tour operators or having one tour operator switch up your vehicle when it gets to the border.
2. The parks have a lot to offer but you may get a similar experience in both parks.
3. You will reduce your paperwork by sticking to one park. You will not need to cross an international border and all the unpleasantness that comes with that.
4. You will spend less time on the road travelling to Parks and have more time on game drives and resting.

Fastest way of travelling to the Mara from Serengeti

The fastest way of Getting to the Mara from Serengeti is flying there. You have two options:

1. You would need to fly to Arusha, then connect to Wilson Airport in Nairobi then take another flight to the Mara. This may be the more expensive option since you would need to take 3 flights. However, its the most dependable option since these routes are busy and do not depend on the time of year. I did some research and found that there are daily flights to all of these destinations and if you plan it out well, you should be able to make the trip in one day without requiring to book a hotel in either countries.
2. The other option is flying directly from the Serengeti to the Masai mara using a number of companies that offer direct flights between the Mara and Serengeti. I did some research and found that Safarilink(Kenya) offer this flight in conjuction with Costal Aviation (tanzania). However, the flight operates only in high season which is  01 July to 31 October and 16 December to 31 March. This flight will involve disembarking the Coastal Aviation flight at Tarime in Tanzania, then transferring by car to the migori border point in Kenya for immigration processing. After this, you will be able to fly to the Mara using the SaferiLink flight.

Travelling to the Mara from Serengeti by Road

If the flight to the Mara from Serengeti is above your budget, you might consider going there by road. While this method may not be cheap either, you might find a way of saving your costs by travelling as a group which will lower your cost of transport per person.

The drive from the Serengeti to the Mara through Isibania is a rough ride and this will make it long. In normal conditions, expect to spend two days travelling with a night layover on the Tanzania side.

Is the trip to the Mara from Serengeti Worth it?

Considering how difficult it is to get to the Mara from the Serengeti and vise versa, the question that comes to mind is if it is worth it. My subjective answer to this topic is No. I have personally never made the trip but from the research I did when researching for this article, I would recommend that you pick one of the parks and stick to it for the length of your stay. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Your journey will make you spend a considerable amount of time on the road and this will reduce the amount time you get to spend doing game drives in the acual parks.
2. The parks are relatively similar and you might end up seeing the same animals on both parks. Considering how cumbersome and expensive the journey is, you may find this to be a waste.
3. The journey is not cheap and you would rather take the flight to a diferent scenery like Zanzibar if you are on the Tanzanian side or Mombasa if you are on the Kenyan side.
4. You will need a Yellow Fever immunization card when crossing the border.