Who we are
meet the gabriels
Hatari Travel exists to prove that travel can regenerate. From two homes on the elephant’s corridor between Kilimanjaro and Meru, we walk the roads less travelled – keeping the pathways open for wildlife, rediscovering Africa’s native foods with the communities they belong to, and growing one garden at a time, without owning an acre of the land or a share of the farms. Our guests don’t watch this work; they join it. And we measure every stay against one question: Are we leaving the land, the people and the table more alive than we found them?
Their story
For Marlies, Jörg and Donyo Gabriel, this has never been only about running lodges. It is a lifelong commitment to wildlife, to landscape, and to a quieter, more meaningful way of travelling.
Through Hatari Lodge and Shu’mata Camp, they have shaped a more considered vision for East African travel – one that values beauty, depth and genuine connection over spectacle. Their work has long gone beyond welcoming guests. It has become a way of protecting what makes this part of the world so extraordinary: its wildlife and wilderness, its food systems and communities, and the wider environmental future of the region.
As trailblazers within the safari industry, they keep showing that travel can be elegant, personal and deeply restorative – not only for the guest, but for the landscapes it touches.
A legendary setting
It is the same instinct that runs through everything they do – to take something beautiful and make it more alive, not merely keep it as it was.
The question that guides them: “Are we making this culture more alive than we found it?”
