Colette's Grand Detour

Day 7 (3rd August 2025)

The Maasai Mara is one of the world’s most iconic and well-known wildlife destinations. The golden savannah is absolutely teaming with animals across large swathes of jaw-dropping scenery. It forms part of the Maasai Mara-Serengeti ecosystem that spans across both Kenya and Tanzania.

The rolling hills and open grassland landscape dotted with acacia trees makes it a spectacular place to drive around and much easier to spot wildlife. The Maasai Mara National Reserve is surrounded by conservancies which are privately owned and mean that the area for the animals to roam is even bigger. The Maasai people live around the edges of the reserve as well as in some of the conservancies. And the park has a strict rule that 90% of the park employees, including rangers must be from the Maasai, ensuring that the communities have a stake in the conservation of the wildlife and deterring poaching.

One of the highlights of a trip to the Maasai Mara is an opportunity to go hot air ballooning over the savannah landscape as the sun rises. Our group got a wake up call at 5.15am and by 6am we were heading to our balloon take off site. We watched a team of 5-6 people surround the balloon slowly blowing air into the massive structure, before the pilot arrived who climbed into the basket and turned on the propane gas tanks to start pumping heat into the balloon.

As soon as we given the instruction we climbed into the basket. Each basket held 16 people which is divided into 4 parts to ensure balance, so you have 4 people per section plus your pilot. We had a slight delay whilst some gusts of winds arrived and pushed some of the air out of the balloon but eventually we took off and were quickly floating over our camp and on our way to explore the savannah.

Ballooning is a ‘must-do’ in the Maasai Mara because its the only real way you can get a sense of just how vast the landscape is. You can’t get the same perspective when driving around. And it’s the only way you can truly understand just how many wildebeest and zebras there are here during migration season. We saw entire hills covered with tiny dots and realised – these were not trees – these were hundreds of thousands of wildebeest slowly making their way through the grasslands. And we saw this over and over again for around an hour. It was incredible.

After landing (thankfully very smoothly) we were driven to the top of one of the rolling hills where a full-English breakfast and champagne was waiting for us to enjoy and celebrate our successful balloon ride.

PS – Yes there is an annoying black dot right in the center of my photos – I think a bug got smooshed whilst we were up in the balloon and I have only just realised as I am reviewing my photos that it stayed there all day!