- Esther Spengler saved $13,000 to spend three days alone traveling in the mountains of Morocco.
- Black Tomato’s “Get Lost” experience drops travelers off in remote destinations around the world.
- The trips typically cater to wealthy travelers and CEOs seeking a mental and physical challenge.
Esther Spengler was lost.
She was around five years into the throws of postpartum depression and felt, “as so many mothers do,” that she had lost her sense of identity after having two children, she said.
Desperate for inspiration, she was researching for unique trips she and her husband could take to celebrate their anniversary in 2020 when she came across an usual service — a luxury travel company that would drop you in the wilderness and leave you to find your own way out.
Spengler, who is now in her mid 30s and lives in Texas, became fixated on the idea. Her homebody husband could see her excitement and suggested she go on the trip alone while he stayed back to watch their kids. Over a year and half and thousands of dollars saved later, Spengler found herself alone in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco — now lost in a very different sense.
“I had felt so long like a dead skeleton walking around and I felt all of a sudden this spark of life,” Spengler said of the experience, which was organized by the UK-based luxury travel company Black Tomato. “It’s completely change the trajectory of my life.”
Black Tomato's "Get Lost" experience is part of a growing trend of travelers, especially wealthy ones, opting out of traditional resort-style luxury in favor of nature-based adventures that can be more challenging, physically and mentally, than they are relaxing.
The idea behind "Get Lost" is for the traveler to be dropped off in a remote area and navigate themselves out it, or to "get lost to find yourself," as the company puts it. Spengler told Black Tomato she wanted to go somewhere warm and far from the US, which is how she ended up in Morocco.
She spent three days alone navigating herself out of the mountains, relying mostly on her map and compass to get to a set end-point in a more populated area. When she wasn't entirely sure she was headed the right way, she consulted a GPS device she carried with her for backup.
"That's what I had been looking forward to, just being alone in the middle of nowhere," she said. "I wanted that isolation where you need space to just think and to be."
Wealthy travelers pay big bucks to get dropped in the wilderness
"We see travelers seeking out activities that require more mental and physical exertion," Misty Belles, vice president of global public relations for luxury travel planning company Virtuoso, told Travel + Leisure last year. "C-suite clients in particular want experiences that go beyond their comfort zone."
Rob Murray-John, head of special projects at Black Tomato who helps plan the "Get Lost" trips, said a wide range of people opt to go on them, adding that "often very successful individuals are doing this as a period of reflection."
Some are experiencing or coming out of a period of personal hardship. Others might be a CEO weighing a career change, or have recently sold their business and are trying to figure out what comes next. Most, though not all, of the clients are wealthy, as the trips can cost upwards of $25,000 dollars.
"From an ethos point of view, what connects everyone is that desire for wildness and complete disconnect from the outside world," he said.
Spengler, whose husband was in the military, spent months saving and fundraising to be able to afford her trip, which cost around $13,000 when she went in October 2021.
Each trip is entirely bespoke and catered to the individual, including "how lost" they truly want to be, Murray-John said. Some clients choose a country they'd like to visit, but that's about all they know ahead of time. Others don't know what country they are headed to but ask to be sent to a specific type of landscape, like a jungle, desert, mountain, or polar environment.
Some clients who opt to fly private don't even know where they are headed until they arrive. The trips take place all over the world, with some past destinations including Mongolia, Peru, and Svalbard in Norway's Arctic.
Once they fly into their destination country, they are met by on-the-ground guides and brought to a remote location over a day or more of travel, which could be by car, aircraft, four-by-four, or even yak. Then they typically undergo a day or two of basic survival training — learning things like how to build a fire, construct a shelter, or dig a hole in the ground to go to the bathroom.
After training, the traveler, equipped with supplies that includes a map and compass, will split up from their guides and be left all alone to navigate themselves back to civilization over the course of several days.
Travel as 'therapy'
Though the person on the trip may feel totally isolated, Black Tomato is always tracking them visually and with satellite communication devices. The guides are on the ground trekking along — often with the client literally in their line of sight, even though the client can't see them — so that they can intervene if needed for safety reasons. Altogether, the trips require months of meticulous planning by Black Tomato, Murray-John said.
"I really want people to experience travel in this way because I think it changes you for the better," he said. "Travel now is becoming a part of your therapy plan."
After the end of the wilderness excursion, the client meets back up with the guides, celebrates, and typically spends a night or two at a hotel to cap off their trip with a bit of traditional luxury.
At the end of Spengler's third day in the wilderness, when she started seeing signs of civilization again, she wasn't ready for it to end.
By the time she returned home to the US, she said her perspective had entirely shifted. "I thought I'm not going back to the way it was before," she said. "I'm going to be responsible and take care of my family but I'm going to start living."
She joined the Army — something she had always wanted to do — and started taking survival classes that involve putting her in tricky situations for days at a time in order to test her abilities.
Spengler said the trip brought her a lasting sense of empowerment and resiliency, and that now when she experiences a hardship she is better equipped to get through it mentally.
"It wasn't relaxing," she said. "It was an adventure."
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