- Adventure travel is not
just adventure travel. I believe that adventure travel is a form of social currency. - Paying almost $100,000
(cash register ringing) to spend a week in the cold. - [Reporter] More people who
are not ready to climb Everest. - We're going 2000 miles an hour! - In this video, I would like to discuss the nature of extreme adventure travel, the kinds of trips that are
available to the ultra rich that you've probably never heard about. I also wanna discuss
whether trips like this should be regulated or whether they should be allowed. Especially looking at adventure travel in the context of the recent
Titan submersible tragedy, I think this is a really good opportunity to take a look at some of the
really expensive adventures that people embark on, including space travel, underwater travel, climbing Everest, climbing the tallest
mountain in Antarctica, and various other types of trips. Now, I have firsthand experience of some of these experiences
as a travel vlogger. In 2022, I climbed the
tallest peak in Antarctica, which is a very expensive,
very expensive trip. But first, let's talk about the idea of adventure travel being social currency. I think that since we
started sharing our lives, our photos, our videos on
social media platforms, including Instagram, there's been an influx of people wanting to do more and
more adventurous things. I think the world has
been shrinking in a way. It has been becoming more accessible. It's so much easier to get to really remote places these days than it was even 20 or 30 years ago. And then, there's all the movies, the blockbuster movies like
"Wild" or "Into the Wild", the movies that basically show us that going out on amazing adventures is something that we should
and could aspire towards. (bright music) I do think that fast
cars and massive mansions and designer handbags still do function as a symbol of wealth in our society. But what better way to show
that you have an amazing life than to go to a place that
none of your family or friends have ever been to? What better way to show
that you live adventurously and to the fullest than by going on a really wild
adventure that challenges you and where you reemerge as a hero? But right now, I wanna tell you a little bit about the hidden world of
ultra-luxury VVIP travel. Yes, it's actually called that. And in fact, there is a word for it, and it is Luxpeditions. "A Luxpedition is for those "who want their Bear Grylls
experience during the daytime, "but at night, want to blast away "the dust, dirt, and
sweat with a power shower "and slip beneath crisp, clean sheets." The idea is basically to provide a kind of anti-luxury luxury. So, you get the whole
adventurous experience of being out there in
a really remote place and challenging yourself, but without really going the whole way. Here's a couple of
examples of Luxpeditions that I personally have come across. There's a company called White Desert which operates luxury
private camps in Antarctica. For a neat (cash register ringing)
$100,000 per person, you get flown on a private jet to one of their camps in Antarctica. You get to stay in a beautiful tent that has heated flooring, and of course, there's a private chef who will cook for you
every day and every night. There's optional add-ons that
you can purchase as well, such as hanging out with the penguins. Or for a little bit of
a hefty sum of money, you get to climb a virgin peak. Yep, that's a virgin peak that most likely nobody
has ever climbed before. Another example of a company
that caters to the ultra rich and organizes trips just for
them is Cookson Adventures. These guys don't actually
publish prices on their website, presumably because all the experiences they create and design
are just so bespoke. But you can get an idea if you
just go to the contact form. For one, you can select
the World First option. Presumably, this means they'll
help you design an experience that nobody in written
history has ever done before. And then there's the price selector. The minimum budget they work with is about 150,000 pounds, about $200,000. But if you slide the price gauge all the way to the other side, (cash register ringing) you end up at a budget
of 1 million pounds-plus. Spending $100,000 per person
on a trip to Antarctica or $1 million-plus on some other crazy, ultra-remote,
ultra-secluded private trip may seem ludicrous to us. I mean, keep in mind that
maybe my perception of money is going to be very different
to how a billionaire or a millionaire views money. For me, that would be a
terrible financial blow. So, I can definitely see why someone would book a holiday like that. I mean, I think on a very basic level, the motivations of taking a trip to the ends of the earth
that is very expensive versus taking a backpacking trip into the woods for a few days, the motivations are similar for a backpacker and a billionaire, if I can draw that comparison. Because I think that in both cases, what we're looking for
is to feel adventurous, to push our limits, to go to places that few of the people that we know have been to, and to just live a very
special, new kind of experience in close proximity to nature. This is where we get to the next type of ultra-expensive trips that people take, and these are the
ultra-expensive expeditions. And a lot of these expeditions are mountaineering expeditions. I wanna talk about Everest and I wanna talk about
Mount Vinson in Antarctica because I have done the latter, so I feel like I can give
you a bit of a perspective into what it's actually like. The cheapest Everest
expeditions that I could find will set you back at least $40,000.
(cash register ringing) But more commonly, you
would be looking at spending about $70,000 and more.
(cash register ringing) And that is without the gear, without previous training, without actually getting to
Nepal in the first place. You might wonder, why are these expeditions so expensive? Well, number one, there's a permit system in Nepal, so permits need to be paid. Sherpas need to be hired, guides need to be hired and paid as well. There's a lot of moving
parts that go into it even before you start climbing. And then, once you're on the climb, of course, there's the
whole infrastructure of Everest Base Camp. There's tents, there's
equipment, there's food. In reality, there is probably no upper end to how much an Everest
expedition could cost, because in addition to, let's say, the $70,000 as a base payment, there's a company called Seven
Summits that offers add-ons. In addition to climbing Everest
with 8848 The Residence, you get a private tent all to yourself, and here are some of the amenities. A private ensuite with hot
shower, a private restroom, personal stove heater, a onesie PJ, a chest of drawers, personal humidifier, a morning beverage
service, and a shoe rack. I don't know why you'd need
a shoe rack on Everest, but fair enough. And then you can pay a neat $8,000 extra to get helicoptered out
of Base Camp to Kathmandu. I mean, I laugh, but actually, I get it. Imagine that you're a millionaire
entrepreneur businessman who also wants to climb Everest, but you can't afford to take
two entire months off of work. That happens to a lot of people. So, then, paying $30,000 for this upgrade where you get to work from
your own tent, have internet, and then be able to get off the mountain as soon as you're done with your climb, that makes sense in some
contexts and to some people. There is definitely a lot of criticism of people who just pay their way into it and then expect the Sherpas
to do the brunt of the work. Now, keep in mind that the vast majority of the climbers there are very fit and are very well-prepared, and they do carry their own backpacks and their own oxygen bottles
and things like that. I don't think the
situation is quite as dire as some media outlets
would have you believe. I do believe that there
should be some checks in place preventing just any person with money to be able to access the mountain just because they can pay for it. There's a couple of companies that I've come across personally that will take people up the mountain even if those people have very little to no climbing experience. This is how we get to Antarctica. And Antarctica is pretty
special to me because in 2022, (soft music) I went on a climbing expedition
there to reach the summit of the tallest mountain in
Antarctica, Mount Vinson. This expedition is pretty pricey. I paid about (cash register ringing)
$40,000 to go. It was a very serious
consideration for me because spending $40,000 on this
one trip felt almost wrong. I was giving away the
bulk of all of my money which I could've put into, potentially, a down payment for an apartment
or something like that. But keep in mind, again,
I'm not a millionaire. This was a big chunk of
my entire life budget. I decided to spend it on that trip because I thought that I just loved the idea of going
on this amazing adventure and doing something so wild and so huge that I'll never forget. That was just my priority at the time. I knew that I'd rather spend
that money on that adventure rather than something that perhaps would seem more reasonable to most people. That's the choice I made. And I remember the
moment that I was making the wire transfer and my stomach was just sinking. And I was thinking, "Oh, my God, "am I making the worst mistake of my life? (laughs) "It's just so expensive!" And that feeling stayed
with me for a little while, until I got to Antarctica. And then, everything
became very, very clear. I had no regrets and I
still have no regrets. Even though, again, it still pains me to think about how much it was, I think it was one of the
best things I've ever done and will definitely never, ever forget it for the rest of my life. So, let me tell you a
little bit about Antarctica, the kinds of people that
go on trips like that, and what's actually involved. As opposed to Everest,
when you go to Antarctica, there's none of the luxuries. You're staying in tents. You're eating dehydrated food. That's pretty much it. The way that you get to Antarctica is also not on a private
jet or anything like that. They charter a big 747 which brings everybody into Antarctica, all the people that are
doing various expeditions. They land on a big airstrip and then you get transferred to this camp that is managed by a private company. It's a very basic camp, very rudimentary, but they have nice food. And they have you stay in tents as well, but you can rent a fat bike and you can fat bike around the camp, which is kinda cool. And then you take a small, little plane, I don't know if they're
Cessnas or something, but very small, little
Alaska-style planes, like bush planes. And then you get transferred
to Vinson Base Camp, and from there, you put on all your gear and you pull your sled with
all of your gear behind you and you start climbing up to the mountain. It's not luxurious at all. You don't get really
any special treatment. There are no Sherpas
helping you to the top. In fact, there are no
Sherpas there at all, unless they're just helping out with an expedition as a guide. But there is none of that kind of culture that you see on Everest, that you hear about on Everest. It's pretty basic. So, where does all that money go? Well, it goes into chartering that 747, it goes into sustaining that base camp. And of course, everybody who
works there needs to be paid. The people managing the base camp who spend three months out of the year working in Antarctica with no internet. There's the mountain guides, the pilots. I would estimate that about
80% of the money I spent goes to covering the actual
logistical costs of the trip. And interestingly enough, going into this expedition, I wasn't really sure what to expect in terms of who I would meet there. Most of the people that were in my team and that were on some of
the other teams that I saw were high-net individuals who either had their own businesses or just held very high positions
at various corporations. And they were all very fit people who, some of them climbed Everest, some of them had climbed all kinds of other technical
mountains all around the world. It was a really amazing
mixed bag of individuals, all of whom were just united by this dream to go and do amazing
adventures and amazing things and go and see some of
the most remote places on planet earth. I definitely didn't have a sense that anybody was there by accident. I think we, everybody just just loved being there and really wanted to be there. So, why? Why spend so much money on doing really wild and crazy adventures, really extreme things where you know that there's a high chance that
you could have an accident, perish without a trace, or just die? But I really do believe
that whether you're a backpacker or a billionaire, whenever you go and do something that is really outside
of your comfort zone, maybe something that you've dreamt about for a really long time, maybe something that you've trained for for a really long time, I think you're tapping into some kind of ancestral, visceral need that we have as humans for adventure. We have become so
detached from the outdoors that these kinds of grand
adventures, I really think, serve as some kinds of rites of passage that we create for ourselves to grow, to evolve as human beings, to prove to ourselves and to our tribe that we are strong, that we are
worthy, that we can survive. But what happens if your
desire for adventure puts your own life at risk or endangers the lives of others? Should we be allowed to
take these kinds of risks? Well, I think the short answer
for me is it really depends. It really depends on the context. It really depends on the level of responsibility that you bear for yourself and for others. I do believe there should
be more checks in place to ensure that we are not putting other
people's lives in danger. So, is it right, is it wrong? Is it good, is it bad? Is it ethical or not? This type of travel, I think, raises a lot of eyebrows. It's something that's very controversial just because of the stakes involved and because of the price tags involved. Are those really things that we need to concern ourselves with and project our own judgments as to whether they're right or wrong? Honestly, I don't think so. I don't think they're a big enough deal. I mean, yes, of course it's a massive deal if you go out there and you
lose your life, unfortunately. But I feel like there's
something about adventure that makes it so rare and so special that I really feel like we should have a little bit more empathy for the people that actually go out and do these things. Rather than calling
them stupid and foolish and under-prepared, rather than saying that they've
paid for their own funeral and for their own death, I feel like we should
maybe take a step back and consider that they've
just done something that was probably one of
their biggest dreams ever. And yes, unfortunately,
they risked their life and some of them maybe perished. But in a way, what a wonderful thing to be able to make your dreams come true. And especially at that level. (soft music)
