The new luxury vacation: being dumped in the middle of nowhere
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
At first, I was willing to give the writer the benefit of the doubt, but when I realized that the writer was getting Wood/Food/Water dropoffs regularly, is when I realized this thing is definitely for sheltered rich people.
You can see here how dry river beds flood https://youtu.be/oWHvi_tW-rg?t=206
It’s an easy source for getting water too. Not only that, coming worldwide via global warming:
Intense storms in Egypt unleashed a massive swarm of scorpions from their nests, stinging 450 people and killing 3: https://www.yahoo.com/news/intense-storms-egypt-unleashed-ma...
I'm only 38 now but I wouldn't keep up with those youngsters. 10 miles is a good day's walk for a normal person, or 6 miles for a pleasure walk.
The amount of elevation change does matter, too. I am talking about both the difference between the trip elevation and his normal living elevation as well as the total elevation change within those 18 miles.
If you're not even carrying your own food/water 18 miles should be a piece of cake.
A trail on a hilly terrain is a completely different story.
I did half-dome in Yosemite many years ago, and if I remember it's about 7 miles one-way with ~4000-5000 feet of elevation change. But the trail is mostly quite good, and it's as much as I'd want to hike in a day.
For a two day trip, especially if the trail is rough, 18 miles sounds about right.
Then again, the sort of person that buys these trips would probably be upsold $30k worth of carpets by the end of it.
Looking for flights and arranging other practical stuff is work, no reason to do it yourself if you’re filthy rich.
I’m still not really sure why this particular package costs 30k, Black Tomato seems to have some unusually high margins for luxury travel. We’d probably arrange this kind of an excursion for much less money (as a part of a larger holiday, which would cost at least 30k), but I’m not sure about the full extent of the support team they offer.
I know of CEO that made several blunders leading to reduced retention that I’m convinced were at least partly a result of this dynamic.
It might be useful to know what you and the grandparent comment consider healthy though, you could both have very different ideas of base level health.
It’s like saying escape rooms are easy. They’re meant to be challenging to the level of the player.
Isn't that a basic requirement of a luxury vacation?
Of course prior wilderness experience is also essential, so I guess some people will want to spend extra for a special forces guide.
I mean...you can do a lot of things for less than they are sold for. This should not be a revelation. People, however, pay extra money for convenience and hand-holding. This should also not be a revelation. You need look no further than bloated SLAs.
Of course there would be rules about not starting in active warzones, or countries where you would be locked up as a spy, but I'm sure viewers would accept that. Also, it would be a bit unfair if a competitor had to start on a remote island, but I recently calculated that 99% of the Earth's land surface is accounted for by continents and islands no smaller than Sicily. The other edge case would be starting in Antarctica, but people do complete solo crossings of that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlPCxI8eOnY&list=PLsplwj_Ee0...
Group of people get dropped in a field in Amsterdam and need to reach Monaco in 5 days to win a 5k prize, the catch is there have no money on them so they have to rely on the kindness of strangers.
Largely it would be the same challenge as the present day version, except you couldn't use vehicles (except riding horses/camels), and you'd have to navigate using only information that would have been visible at that time, like mountains, rivers, and long-lasting settlements.
To enforce this fiction, the players could receive information from a team mate that had access to a 3D model of their location as it would have looked in the relevant historic time period. That team mate would then be able to instruct them which direction to walk in, and which geographical features to follow.
Every night, players would try to observe the location of the moon and planets relative to constellations, in order to calculate which century, year, month and approximate day they are in. Of course, the players on the ground would know the answer, but would have to show how they worked it out, and their team mate would have to perform the same in a 3D model which uses a planetarium system for rendering the night sky of the intended period.
To accurately determine their location without cheating, the player on the ground would have to find their way to a location which existed at the time, and whose exact position is known in the present day, such as the Parthenon or Stone Henge.
Survival in the wilderness sucks though, especially without a tribe, so for this competition to avoid turning into a snuff film, the contestants would have to be dropped somewhere survivable, which would almost guarantee that the terrain is easily identifiable without human landmarks. I.e. no Antarctica, no Saharan or Midwestern desert, etc.
Then I think everyone would just converge on the strategy of finding and following waterways because the probability of being within a reasonable distance of a human settlement with a surviving landmark is relatively low. Most medium to large lakes were formed either millions of years ago or right after the last ice age so between them, local topography, and visible distant mountains it'd be relatively easy to triangulate a location.
You're right about the strategy, though. If a player could find their way to the coast, and knew their rough latitude (by observing Polaris, for example), their team mate could probably work out which river they had been following, and then guide them back from the coast to some ancient monument.
Also, this guy lives in Manchester. He lives next two spectacular national parks (Lake District and the Dales), and he goes to Morocco. Could have gone to the Highlands if you wanted remote. Inexplicable. Smh. Embarrassment.
It costs a fortune, though.
So does paying $1000 for a phone, and yet how many people in this thread critiquing the camping experience have one of those?
Amankora in Bhutan is very cool, but also very different.
Africa obviously has tons of options too, but everybody goes there.
It really depends on what you are looking for. There are lots of expensive ways to climb a mountain if you want something more extreme (but still controlled).
My suggestions are kind of all over the place because I don’t really know what exactly you’re looking for. I could list hundreds of options.
I am interested in seeing what curated adventures are out there, reading first hand accounts of the experience, and considering them for myself. Doesn’t necessarily have to involve a mountain and I do have a predisposition for wanting to try it DIY before relying on a guide but I recognize that that kind of thinking may need recalibrating outside of the US.
I would suggest that you avoid the big ones like Black Tomato or Mr&Mrs Smith, you will have a much better experience working with a boutique where you can know all the staff, and more importantly the staff will know you.
* FWIW this is something I intend to solve next year.
The subscription is 1000 GBP/year, this is what you get http://dolphincp.com/wp-content/uploads/GAL-100-JAN-2021-12p...
I don’t really have to explain why and how the current situation sucks, that’s self-explanatory after you see the PDF above. I want to offer the same (but better) for free, and make my money from the industry standard 10% that goes to travel agencies.
If you want to talk high-end travel, or even just get a referral to a good luxury travel agent you can write me at travel@safe.im I’m more than happy to answer any questions, even if you’re just planning a trip :)
(For user generated content the gold standard is the flyertalk luxury section, but this requires a lot of reading to get into. Tripadvisor is completely full of fake reviews)
Regardless of the "stats" here (absurd price point, 2 days / 18 miles, plenty of supervision), it feels the author is as self-aware as one would hope. The article, longer than necessary to be sure, is still well-written.
His experience, his feelings throughout -- make any arguments you want about them, but it feels genuine. I learned a good amount about Black Tomato et al., and regardless of their merits, they do exist and people are using them.