Masai Mara National Reserve

Opened in 1974, the Maasai Mara National Reserve is the most popular game park in Kenya. Managed by the Maasai tribe, the area is named after this group of people who first migrated to South Kenya from the Nile Valley in the mid-17th century. The Maasai herdsmen are nomadic people who do not believe in the concept of land ownership and choose instead to live in harmony with the wildlife grazing in the area. The reserve, which occupies a 320-square-kilometre (124-square-mile) chunk of the famous Serengeti plains, is inhabited by many of Africa's most popular wild animals, including lions, cheetahs, elephants, leopards, black rhinos and hippos. There are also over 500 resident birds in the park including ostrich, lark, sunbird and 57 species of birds of prey. The area is famous for rolling grassland and for the Mara River, which runs through the reserve from north to south. It is also the place for one of nature's best spectacles - the annual migration from the dry plains of Tanzania of thousands of wildebeest crossing crocodile-infested waters in order to reach more fertile grazing.