Maasai Mara Game Reserve and Kidepo National Park which is better? These both are two parks with semi-arid vegetation and a variety of wildlife and bird species that make them unique as some of the most sought-after parks in the region. And one of the questions travelers visiting these parks ask when they want to visit either is which of the two is better than the other. In this article we weigh these two parks and let you decide which is better for you.
As you can see Maasai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya and Kidepo National Park in Uganda, so for whichever park you choose you will be in a different country.
Also if you are into sentimental attachment Kidepo National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Maasai Mara is not but it’s a Kenya-protected area.
When you visit Maasai Mara Game Reserve you will be visiting the southwestern part of Kenya in the town of Narok and when you visit Kidepo National Park you will be visiting the northeastern part of Uganda in the town of Kitgum.
If you are looking to visit a park with a bigger area cover, you may want to go with Maasai Mara Game Reserve which sits on about 1,510 square kilometers of land as Kidepo National Park sits on 1,442 square kilometers of land.
Though both parks have a said semi-arid vegetation Maasai Mara Game Reserve is known to have a lot of open bushy grasslands, acacia trees and savanna and Kidepo National Park is known to have rugged, Borassus palms, mountainous landscape and lush green vegetation.
Both parks have the big five lions, leopards, buffaloes, elephants and rhinos. However, these parks also have other animals that make them unique. In Maasai Mara Game Reserve you will find more wildebeest, zebras, impalas, elands, spotted hyenas and many more. In Kidepo National Park on the other hand you will find more elephants, cheetahs, zebras, crocodiles and other. But bottom line you will find almost all the animal species in both parks.
The activities you will do in these parks include but not limited to game drives, bird watching, hiking, Maasai community visit and other activities of course not forgetting the wildebeest migration, though for you to catch it you need to travel in the season its on. In Kidepo you will have activities like game drives, trail walks, bird watching, nature walks, and a community visit to the ike people among other activities.
Both these parks are located far from their respective capitals and you may take a number of hours to get to them by road, so usually most tourists will opt for the air transport option to get to the parks.
Maasai mara is about 5 to 6 hours from Nairobi by road and Kidepo is 10 to 11 hours from Kampala by road.
As stated, when you visit any of these parks, you will also visit the communities near them, you should know that Maasai Mara Game Reserve is of very much cultural importance to the Maasai people after whom it’s even named. This is the same story for the Karamong people, especially the Ike people to Kidepo National Park; this community is strongly attached to this park.
These parks can be visited any time of the year, all throughout the year. Definitely people will prefer the dry months which are July, August and September or January, February and March. It’s the same weather across the region. A side note for Maasai Mara Game Reserve if you desire is to see the wildebeest migration, you need to find out the exact season so that you do not misfire.
