The last town before the gate

Narok and Talek before the Mara: fuel, cash, gates, the drive (2026)

Name: Masai Mara National Reserve
Address: Kenya

Narok is the county town that runs the Masai Mara and the last place on the road with banks, supermarkets and a choice of filling stations. Sekenani Gate is 87 km further on, all tarmac. Talek, the village at the reserve's busiest gate, is the second gateway, but it is a trading centre, not a town.

If you only want the answer

Fill the tank, draw cash and buy food in Narok, 141 km from Nairobi; after it, fuel is sold only at camps and lodges and can run short. Narok to Sekenani Gate is 87 km of tarmac, about 1.5 hours; Talek Gate is 105 km and about 2 hours 20 minutes, with murram after Sekenani. Narok County Referral Hospital is the nearest public hospital to the reserve.

Where Narok sits on the road to the Masai Mara

Narok is 141 km from central Nairobi and 156 km from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, on the main road through Mai Mahiu. It is the seat of Narok County, the government that holds the Masai Mara National Reserve in trust and sets its fees. The reserve is not a Kenya Wildlife Service park, so nothing about the KWS tariff or eCitizen applies here.

In town, the road splits. Straight on and then left is the 87 km tarmac road to Sekenani Gate, the main gate. North-west is the road through Nkorkorri, Lemek and Aitong to Musiara and Oloololo Gate, 113 to 114 km away. Whichever you take, Narok is the last place where a forgotten item costs you minutes rather than half a day.

Fuel in Narok, and why you fill up here

OpenStreetMap lists about a dozen filling stations in and around the town centre: three Shell, two Hass Petroleum, TotalEnergies, Rubis, Kenol (at the Qahira Hotel), Gulf Energy, National Oil, Stabex, Basabra, Rash Energy and several unnamed ones. That is enough choice that one closed pump does not matter.

Fill up properly. Inside the reserve, the Mara Conservancy says, fuel is sold only at camp and lodge fuel stations, sometimes runs short, and there is no public pump anywhere in the Triangle. Prices jumped in 2026: on 14 April diesel rose by KSh 40 to KSh 206 a litre, then came down to KSh 197 the next day. Expect camps to charge more than Narok.

The small trading centres at Sekenani, Talek and Oloolaimutia sit right at the gates, but nobody publishes whether they sell fuel. Do not plan on them.

Cash, cards and the park fee

OpenStreetMap places branches of KCB, Equity Bank (two), Co-operative Bank, Family Bank, National Bank, Bank of Africa and Transnational Bank in Narok. ATMs normally sit at these branches, which makes Narok the last reliable place to draw shillings before the reserve.

You need less cash at the gate than you might think. The reserve fee is collected for Narok County by Kenya Airports Parking Services (KAPS). The Mara Triangle takes no cash at all, only M-Pesa and card. On the Narok side the system still took cash in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, the Auditor-General found, but the county is moving to cashless. Carry a card and M-Pesa, and keep dollars or shillings as a back-up. Cash is still useful for fuel at camps, tips and village visits.

In 2026 a non-resident adult pays USD 100 per day from January to June and USD 200 from July to December, where a day runs from 06:00 to 18:00 whatever time you enter. A vehicle with fewer than six seats costs KSh 1,000 a day. The entry fees page has the full table.

Supermarkets and shopping for camping

Narok has Naivas, QuickMart and Sinende. QuickMart opened its 60th branch at Basic Moran Narok, at the junction of the Nairobi, Narok and Bomet highways, on 20 February 2024. Older maps still show two Tuskys outlets; the chain collapsed in 2020 and 2021, so ignore them.

If you are camping, buy everything here: food, drinking water, and firewood if you can carry it. Two of the Triangle's three public campsites, Eluai and Oloololo, have no shop; at Iseiya you can buy food and drinking water at the canteen near Mara Serena. The Eluai and private Kiboko sites ask you to bring your own water and firewood.

Hospital, pharmacy and repairs

Narok County Referral Hospital is the main public hospital for the Mara and the nearest one to the reserve, about 87 km from Sekenani Gate. Older maps also show a Narok District Hospital, which appears to be the same place under its former name. For anything serious, patients are flown to Nairobi; the health page covers evacuation cover and the clinics at three Triangle-area lodges.

There are pharmacies in town, Chemist Warehouse among them, so buy repellent, rehydration salts and any top-up medicines here. For the car, TyreCentre is the one repair shop mapped by name. Punctures are the commonest breakdown on Mara murram, so check the spare and the jack in Narok rather than at the gate.

Who runs the reserve, and where to find them

Narok County Government has its headquarters in Narok town, but it publishes no visitor or fee page for the reserve. The reserve's own administration sits at Sekenani Gate, where the Governor opened new wardens' offices in May 2026. No public telephone number for the Sekenani office is published.

The Mara Triangle, west of the Mara River, is run for the county by the Mara Conservancy, a Kenyan not-for-profit, from its headquarters at Iseiya. It answers email at mara@maratriangle.org and takes campsite bookings online at marabookings.co.ke. Its agreement with the county lapsed on 30 June 2026 and, by its own August 2026 report, it is operating without one while the county asks for changes. Several websites that look official (maasaimara.ke, masaimara.ke, masaimarapark.com) are run by neither the county nor the Conservancy.

The drive from Narok to Sekenani Gate

Narok to Sekenani is 87 km by routing, or 84 km as the road project was measured, and it has been tarmac all the way since October 2020. Routing gives 1 hour 36 minutes; drivers quoted by the Kenya News Agency said about an hour. The old murram version took up to four hours.

Leave Narok with enough daylight. The Mara Triangle's gates admit no vehicle after 18:30, and the reserve ticket is defined as 06:00 to 18:00, so a Narok departure after about 15:00 risks arriving as the day closes. Guests leaving the reserve by road, Narok County said in 2024, must exit by 10:00 or pay another day's fee.

Two other gates are close to Sekenani. Oloolaimutia Gate, to the south, is 101 km from Narok. Talek Gate is 18.5 km on from Sekenani, about 45 minutes.

Talek: the second gateway

Talek is the village just outside Talek Gate on the north-east side of the reserve, 105 km from Narok and 246 km from Nairobi. It sits on the Talek River, where the busiest cluster of camps on the Narok side lines both banks: Basecamp Masai Mara and Basecamp Adventure on the community bank, Ilkeliani across a footbridge from the reserve, and Mara Intrepids, Mara Explorer, Rekero and Naibor inside. The last stretch from Sekenani is murram.

Talek is a trading centre, not a service town. Narok County lists Talek and Sekenani as business zones, but no source describes their shops, fuel or ATMs, so treat Narok as your last stop for everything. Travellers report matatus as far as the Talek and Sekenani trading centres; from the gate onwards you need a camp or operator vehicle, because public service vehicles are not allowed in the reserve.

One wildlife note for campers on this side: the Mara Hyena Project found higher densities of spotted hyena around Talek town than in the Mara Triangle. Keep food sealed and stay in the tent after dark.

Sleeping in Narok

Most visitors drive straight through, because the gate is only an hour and a half away. If you arrive late from the airport or want a dawn start, two hotels publish their own details. Seasons Hotel Narok calls itself one of the biggest transit hotels in town and has 53 rooms. Enkipai Hill Hotel, 1 km from town and 86 km from Sekenani Gate by its own count, is solar-powered and has a pool, spa and gym. Neither publishes a rate on the pages read; book direct.

Narok's new airport, not yet open

A new airport is being built at Ewaso Nyiro near Narok town. Ground was broken on 6 March 2025, it cost KSh 677 million, and on 25 August 2026 it was said to be two months from completion, to carry scheduled flights to Wilson. In 2025 newspapers reported a plan to close the airstrips inside the reserve once it opens. As of October 2026 it is in no airline's timetable and the reserve strips are still served. If it opens, fly-in guests may land at Narok and finish the trip by road.