Giorgi’s Safari at Maasai Mara — October 2026

Updated: 15 October 2026

My experience at the Maasai Mara in October 2026 was simply extraordinary — and I say that as someone who approaches superlatives with genuine caution. I am a public health researcher by profession, trained to weigh evidence carefully, and I had been sceptical that a safari would live up to its own mythology. It did, and then it went further.

Africa Calling Safaris arranged everything — flights, transfers, two different camps, and a private vehicle for all drives. The itinerary was thoughtful in ways I noticed only in retrospect: the quieter, less-visited areas of the Mara ecosystem in the first half, the main reserve in the second, so that by the time we saw the largest concentrations of game we had already developed enough of an eye to appreciate what we were seeing.

Lions at Sunset

The defining moment arrived on the second afternoon. We found a pride — three adult females and seven cubs of different ages — on a kopje overlooking the plain. One of the females had made a kill perhaps two hours before our arrival and the cubs were still feeding when we reached them. The guide cut the engine and we sat in silence as the sun descended behind the Esoit Oloololo escarpment, turning everything amber and rust. The cubs ignored us entirely. Two of the younger ones fell asleep mid-feed. I took more photographs in those forty minutes than in the entire rest of the trip.

What surprised me most was not the drama of the predator interactions but the texture of the quieter hours. Driving through an acacia woodland watching a giraffe browse at seven metres above ground. Sitting beside a hippo pool as the animals surfaced and submerged in a slow, indifferent rhythm. Watching a martial eagle disassemble a monitor lizard on a termite mound while the guide identified each species of bird perched around the carcass with the same calm expertise he brought to tracking lions.

The Wildebeest and the Cross

October sits at the tail end of the migration crossing season, and we were fortunate to witness one final crossing of the Mara River on our fourth day. Perhaps eight hundred wildebeest assembled on the northern bank over the course of two hours, then moved in a sudden collective decision — nobody can entirely explain the trigger — into the brown water and across to the Kenyan side. The crocodiles were present but this particular group crossed without losses, which, the guide told us, is more common than the documentary footage suggests.

I returned to Tbilisi with a more considered perspective on what wild ecosystems actually look like when they function. The Mara is not pristine; it faces real pressures from agriculture, climate variability, and tourism density. But what Africa Calling Safaris showed me was a corner of it that is still profoundly intact, where the same ecological processes that shaped these species over millions of years are still playing out, every day, without any human direction. That is a rare thing to see. I recommend it unreservedly.