Kenya 6 Day Itinerary

Maasai Mara park fees doubled at the start of July 2026, from 100 to 200 US dollars per non-resident adult per day, which is the kind of detail that can quietly wreck a safari budget if you’re planning this trip around the wrong half of the calendar. Route logic matters just as much as budget here: Amboseli sits south of Nairobi toward the Tanzanian border, while Lake Nakuru sits north in the Rift Valley, and trying to link the two directly means a seven-hour backtrack through Nairobi that eats a full day for no scenic gain. A tighter six-day loop skips that zigzag entirely.

Day 1: Arrival in Nairobi

Land at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Most nationalities need Kenya’s Electronic Travel Authorization, which replaced visa-on-arrival back in January 2024, costs 30 to 34 US dollars, and should be applied for online at least a few days before departure since approval can take up to 72 hours even though many clear in a few hours. Uber and Little Cab both operate reliably in Nairobi and are the easiest way to get around without haggling over fares.

Spend the afternoon at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, where the daily public visiting hour, currently 11am to noon, lets you watch keepers bottle-feed orphaned elephant calves that were rescued after poaching or drought killed their mothers; it’s a genuinely moving hour and the small entry donation goes directly to the rescue program. If you have energy left, Nairobi National Park is a strange, worthwhile oddity: a full game park with lions, giraffes, and rhinos sitting just a few kilometers from the city’s skyline, visible in the same frame on a clear day. Round out the day at the Maasai Market for beadwork and carvings, and expect to negotiate hard; first prices quoted to visitors run well above what vendors will actually accept.

Day 2 and 3: Amboseli National Park

Amboseli sits roughly four hours southeast of Nairobi by road, and it earns its reputation almost entirely on one thing: unobstructed views of Mount Kilimanjaro rising across the Tanzanian border, best seen at sunrise before afternoon cloud typically rolls in and swallows the peak. The park also holds one of Africa’s most habituated elephant populations, meaning close, relaxed sightings are the norm rather than the exception, a function of decades of research tracking here rather than luck. Split your two days between an early morning game drive, timed for both the light and the mountain view, and a slower afternoon drive through the swamps around Enkongo Narok, where elephants, hippos, and a huge range of birdlife concentrate even in dry season. A Maasai village visit is worth doing once if you’re curious about pastoralist life, but go in with realistic expectations: most village visits near major parks are semi-staged for tourism income, which doesn’t make them worthless, just worth knowing going in.

Day 4: Transfer to the Maasai Mara

Rather than doubling back toward Lake Nakuru, the more sensible routing links Amboseli directly to the Maasai Mara, either by a long road transfer of eight to nine hours or, far more comfortably, a short scheduled flight connecting through Nairobi’s Wilson Airport, which most safari operators can arrange and which turns a grinding travel day into a couple of hours in the air. If your schedule and budget allow it, the flight is worth the extra cost purely for the time it buys back for game drives.

Day 5: Maasai Mara game drives

The Mara is Kenya’s headline reserve for a reason, home to consistent Big Five sightings and, if your dates land between roughly July and October, front-row access to the Great Migration, when over a million wildebeest and zebra cross the Mara River from the Serengeti in one of the most dramatic wildlife spectacles left on the planet. Outside migration season the Mara still delivers strong lion, leopard, and cheetah sightings, so don’t write off a visit in the shoulder months. Note the fee structure carefully when budgeting: the main reserve costs 100 dollars per non-resident adult per day through the end of June 2026, jumping to 200 dollars from July 1st, while several private conservancies bordering the reserve, including Naboisho and Mara North, charge their own separate fees in the 80 to 150 dollar range but generally offer lower vehicle density and off-road driving privileges the main reserve doesn’t allow. A hot air balloon ride at dawn over the plains is genuinely spectacular and worth the splurge if you can fit it in, typically booked the evening before through your camp.

Day 6: Departure

Fly back to Nairobi from one of the Mara’s airstrips, a short hop of under an hour versus the multi-hour road transfer, giving you a comfortable buffer before your international departure from Jomo Kenyatta. If time allows before your flight, a last stop at a curio shop or the Nairobi Railway Museum near the airport fills an idle afternoon better than sitting in a departure lounge.

Practical notes

Pack neutral-colored clothing for game drives, tsetse flies are drawn to bright blues and blacks in some regions, and bring a good zoom lens if you’re serious about wildlife photography since most sightings happen at a respectful distance from vehicles. Yellow fever vaccination isn’t universally required for Kenya but is often requested if you’re arriving from or transiting a country where it’s endemic, so check your specific routing before you fly. Malaria prophylaxis is worth discussing with a travel doctor regardless of season, since both Amboseli and the Mara sit in transmission zones. The dry seasons, January to March and June to October, generally give the best game viewing since animals cluster around remaining water sources, while the long rains from March to May can turn Mara tracks to thick mud and complicate game drives considerably.