The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere – The New Yorker

I was half asleep when I was jolted awake by beams of light and the sound of crunching rocks. Two men with flashlights were headed toward me, with some urgency, and they were calling out something. I caught a glimpse of one of the men: his face was partially obscured by a scarf. I unzipped the shelter, scrambled for my flashlight, put on my boots, and, in a panic, tried to remember where I had packed my knife.

The Black Tomato travel company has predicated its business, in part, on the notion that many affluent vacationers no longer wish to lounge for a week by an infinity pool: they want to earn their enjoyment in some way, either through physical exertion or by doing good works abroad. Black Tomato specializes in adventure, and its Web site beckons daring customers with such offerings as iceland: snorkel and dive between tectonic plates. The companys packages are expensive. Some cost more than fifteen thousand dollars per person.

The concept of Get Lost isnt only that clients must find their way out of desolate situations; they have no clue where in the world they are going, until the last minute. Participants are also encouraged to surrender their cell phones. The imperative is not just to disappear but to disconnect. After an expedition ends, clients are pampered at a beautiful hotel before flying home. The locations for Get Lost range from the Mongolian steppe to the jungles of Costa Rica to the deserts of Namibia. Its clientele is similarly various. Predictably enough, several tech bros have taken such trips. But the firm has also arranged an ambitious expedition for a newlywed couple, and for a stay-at-home motherwho, upon returning home, applied to join the Air Force.

As soon as I read about the idea, I also wanted to get lostalthough I couldnt quite explain the urge. I live in Manchester, England, and, unlike many of my friends there, I have never been an enthusiastic camper. In fact, I avoid such weekends if I can, not least because British campsites are laden with persnickety rules about where you can wash up and where your kids can play sports. Its like being back at school, except less comfortable. You have to put on your shoes if you need to pee in the night. Also, Im a huge man, and I find crouching in tents annoying. Yet the Get Lost concept had an enticing sense of scale, and there didnt seem to be too many rules. During the various lockdowns, unable to travel, I had longed for adventure. Here it was.

I had some reservations about Get Lost. It would feel strange for me to travel without having first researched my destination. In my work as a reporter, I go abroad often, and I would never fly to a new country without at least reading a few books, or talking to other journalists about their experiences there. But I realized that it might be freeing, just this once, to travel with few preconceptions and with no control. I discussed Get Lost with my wife. She said that it sounded fun; I also detected an eye roll. We agreed on my taking a trip lasting six days. Black Tomato started preparing an itinerary that would begin in early October.

Two weeks before takeoff, Black Tomato sent me a packing list. The suggested itemsnot too many warm clothes, sunblock, hiking boots, long-sleeved shirts, a waterproof jacketindicated some mixture of desert and mountain terrain. Because the trips time frame was tight, I thought that it wouldnt make sense for the company to send me too far from Greenwich Mean Time. I guessed Id be going somewhere in North Africa. Two days before I flew, I received my tickets: Manchester to Marrakech.

The morning after my arrival in the city, Rachid Imerhane, a genial mountain guide with slicked-back hair and an impish smile, collected me from my hotel. I turned off my phone and put it in a bag in the back of the car. We travelled ten hours to the starting point of my adventure. I tried to winkle out my destination from Imerhane, but he was implacable. Once we left Marrakech, I did a lot of staring out the window. The experience was like a very pleasant kidnapping, with coffee breaks.

We drove over high, winding passes and down into a desert plateau, through the city of Ouarzazate, which is sometimes called the Hollywood of Africa, because it has a thriving film business. A giant clapper board adorns the entrance to the town; Gladiator was filmed there, among many other movies. After Ouarzazate, the High Atlas Mountains rose to our left. On our right was the Anti-Atlas. We turned right onto a deserted tarmac road, and out of the plateau.

The elevation increased, the roads becoming narrower and snakier. We swapped cars, to let our driver return to Marrakech. A sturdy white Toyota took us up gravel and dirt tracks, higher into the mountains. We gave a farmer and his two bashful, doe-eyed childrena boy and a girla lift to a small homestead at the top of a remote road. They were about the same age as my kids, who are nine and six, and evidently not used to seeing tourists. Their fatherspeaking Berber, which Imerhane translatedsaid that his son had once visited a city, but his daughter had never left the mountains. Imerhane remarked to me, This is a Morocco that most Moroccans dont know.

Finally, at sunset, after many harum-scarum switchbacks, we reached an apex where two high valleys met. Standing there, in a black T-shirt and combat pants, was Phil Asher. He shook my hand firmly and suggested that I put on a jacket. Its about to get cold, he said, and he was right. He tended to be right about things like that.

Asher motioned toward one of two camp chairs that had been set up beneath a tarpaulin. He explained what my expedition would entail, which seemed daunting; what lessons he would try to impart to me the following morning, in a brief period of training that seemed insufficient; and where I was going to sleep that night, which was not in the comfortably adorned canvas tent where Asher himself was staying but beneath a mosquito shelter, on a roll mat, by myself. As a first-night treat, I was allowed to eat tagine in the canvas tent with Asher, Imerhane, and Hicham Niaarebene, the driver, who prepared the mealit turned out that he was also a chef. The three men composed Black Tomatos support team in the mountains.

Asher, looking me dead in the eye, asked, What do you want to get out of all this?

I didnt have a good answer. I also felt a jangle of nerves.

As the two men with flashlights approached me in the dark, I realized that they were calling out in French, which I know well enough to get by. They were curious about what I was doing alone in the mountains. I clambered to my feet and shook hands with them while trying to explain that I was going on a long walk. They shrugged, looked at each other, and left.

I wasnt sure what to think. Although I was almost certain that this encounter was no cause for alarm, I got out the tracker and sent a text saying that I had received a visit from some locals. Imerhane knew people in a nearby village. I figured that he could make a call and work out whether I was in any trouble. I received no reply to the text. It took me a couple of hours to fall asleep.

I woke up at 5:30 a.m.long before dawn. I was cold, and I hunkered in my sleeping bag, looking at the stars. I think I saw the Plough, although Ive always been baffled by the constellationsit seems as if one could link any group of stars together to make a pattern. As the light in the valley became milkier, I put on my boots and began my morning chores. I filled my water bottles for the day from a large drum that Asher had left, built a fire for breakfast, cooked a meal, struck the shelter, charged my Samsung, brushed my teeth, and packed my bag. I also donned my yellow-and-black shemagh, or head scarf, which Asher had insisted I wear, telling me that it might be more than a hundred degrees in the sun in the hottest part of the day. In Ashers words, the scarf would stop my head from boiling. I felt ridiculous wearing the shemagh, as if I were in costume as an Afghan warlord, but I wanted my head to remain unboiled. I folded the loose ends around my head and took a selfie. My kids, I knew, would laugh themselves silly when they saw the picture.

As I started on my route for the day, at around 8:15 a.m., I received a message on the tracker, from Asher: How was your night? I replied that it was good, but did not receive a response.

According to my maps, I needed to follow the riverbed where I had slept, then take a hard left up a steep valley toward a high peak called Jbel Kouaouch. After I had climbed to about eight thousand feet, I would start to pick my way along an escarpment, eventually descending plateaus and valleys to a plain, where Id spend the night. The days walk was about nine miles.

The first hour was hard. I run most days when Im at home, but theres a difference between running and hauling weight. Loose rocks on the ground often gave way, particularly on steep grades. Navigating posed its own challenges. The G.P.S. kept me pointed in the correct general direction, but it was sometimes fiendish to pick out the precise path that I was supposed to take. Asher had encouraged me to follow goat droppings or boot marks. Sometimes I found them, but for nearly two hours I frequently found myself off course, scrabbling up and down steep banks to relocate a path. After a while, I became better at spotting the slightly different shade of the zigzagging trail.

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The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere - The New Yorker