It was one of life’s great lunches. I was deep in the jungles of Borneo. I had done the sightseeing — a morning visit to the tomb of a leading figure in the War of the Penises, that notorious altercation when neighbouring tribes exchanged insults to one another’s manhood. Then I had headed upriver, my two boatmen poling the dugout canoe, as the last of the longhouses, and the last of what passed for civilisation in these parts, dropped astern.
The river narrowed to a green aisle beneath the leafy vaults of the forest. The air was full of birdsong and butterflies. From the treetops, toucans shrieked and a tribe of proboscis monkeys looked down their long noses at us. By a waterfall, we stopped in a wide wedge of sun. The boatmen baked chicken breast, flavoured with lemongrass and ginger and packed inside bamboo, over a fire on a sandbank. Wine was cooled in the river. I still savour the memory of that lunch.
The best journeys I have made — the ones I think of as the greatest luxury �� have rarely featured a five-star hotel. There was no room service crossing Mongolia by horse, no spa menus trekking in the mountains of Ethiopia, no petals scattered artfully on my pillow while dog-sledding in the Arctic. The journeys that I have loved have been about another kind of luxury entirely.
We have become accustomed to the mini-break, the short sharp shocks of sun and obsequious service. We jet off for long weekends in luxury resorts and are back at our desks by Tuesday morning with the unsettling sense that we have never been away at all. Our break has the substance and satisfaction of a fading dream. Perhaps this is where the refinement of luxury tourism ultimately leads — to something so exquisitely packaged, so smooth and slick and hand-holding that it slides across the surface of our lives, barely causing a ripple.
I have nothing against short breaks; we all love them. But the best travel should be transporting. The farther it takes us from the routines of our own lives, the more interesting it becomes. Travel doesn’t have to be just a rest. It can be a change. It can challenge us, offer us new experiences and fresh horizons. Too often five-star trappings become a barrier between us and our destination.
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Real luxury is about something other than the threadcount of the sheets or the size of the pool. It is about time — time to pause, to savour, to allow things to happen, to get under the skin of a destination, time for the unplanned and the unexpected. It is about space, private space away from the crowds, away from our own culture thronging the well-worn paths of modern tourism. Luxury is not just about comfort. It can also be about stimulation and excitement.
And the best thing is you don’t need to come over all Bear Grylls to get to the headwaters of the Amazon, the white water of Patagonia or the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Dozens of high-end tour operators are pushing the boundaries, offering clients not a trip, but an adventure. The real refinement of luxury travel is the ability to take clients to remote destinations and to offer them unique experiences with style and panache.
Helicopter transfers ferry guests to mountain lodges, Himalayan treks feature village houses elegantly upgraded and restyled, chefs are flown in to serve dinner in a remote monastery or on the rim of an African crater, while a guide in a South American cloud forest ensures a glimpse of the elusive giant anteater.
But it can be even simpler than that — a tented camp on the African savannah, where luxury is about being untroubled by other people, and where five-star treatment is measured by the timeless elements of the African safari — tired muscles after a day spent tracking elephants, a welcome shower beneath a suspended goatskin of hot water, a well-prepared sundowner, a crackling fire, the drifting smell of cooking, the sounds of the African bush and stories from someone who has spent their life in this place. Time slows, and you have the chance to feel the heartbeat of Africa without the noise of your own culture. That is luxury.
Lunching by that remote waterfall in Borneo, as the boatmen sharpened their swords on the rocks and cradled their blowpipes, I felt a long way from anywhere I knew. I had given myself time, and time had become slippery and unreliable. The river, the sandbank, the dappled sunlight, the close embrace of the forests, the silence broken only by birdsong — it felt like the beginning of the world. That was luxury.