October 3, 2008

WORLD

Extreme Adventures

By Mark Jolly

Fifteen new ways to journey to the edges of the earth.

“Extreme” is hardly the first word that comes to mind when you think of Abercrombie & Kent. But, perhaps to counter its genteel image, or perhaps to pump the blood a little faster through some of its “maturing” clientele, the luxury travel company has just hatched its latest series of global explorations under the banner “Extreme Adventures.”

Starting this fall (through to August 2009), A&K rolls out a new portfolio of 15 journeys traversing some of the world’s greatest topological hits from the Arctic to the South Pole. This is how they’ve parceled out the world: mountain trekking (including Everest basecamp and New Zealand’s Tongariro Crossing); edges-of-the-earth type stuff (tracking polar bears in Norway and penguins in Antarctica); desert expeditions to Jordan (following the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia); and undersea adventures in Belize. And then there’s Africa.

Over half of these new experiences are in Africa — which is where A&K’s reputation was first sown in 1962. In Uganda you’ll be able to camp in primeval forest amid some of the 700 mountain gorillas left in the world (visitors are permitted to spend only one hour a day up close with the apes), while in Tanzania you can scale the summit of Kilimanjaro or explore the remote interior of Africa’s largest protected wilderness. But A&K’s ultimate thrill ride is reserved for South Africa — there you’ll be able to pull Gs in a Hunter Hawker fighter jet at 50,000 feet, as well as go nose-to-nose with great white sharks (you’re inside the cage, they’re not).