Field Notes · Money
The cost of remoteness
The places on this site range from forty-five euros a day to two and a half thousand, and the difference is mostly distance from a road. Here is where the money goes, why, and how the same place can be reached at a fifth of the price.
A night in a guesthouse in Leh costs less than a coffee in Longyearbyen. That sentence contains most of what there is to know about the cost of the places on this site: they are priced by distance from a road, by the number of people who can be there at once, and by what has to be flown in. The Budget Simulator holds a per-day band for three styles at every place, and the spread from the cheapest to the most expensive is about fifty to one.
Where the money goes
Not to the bed. In the canopy and fire realms, guides and escorts are the largest line: the Danakil convoy, the Manu operator, the Bwindi permit. In the ice and water realms it is transport and access: the ship to Antarctica, the light aircraft into the Okavango, the liveaboard in Raja Ampat, the charter to Socotra. Lodging leads only where the lodge is the point, in Botswana and Borneo. Food is the most stable line everywhere and rarely more than a fifth.
The fixed items are the ones that do not scale with days, and they decide the trip more than the daily rate. A gorilla permit is a fixed 740 euros for one hour. A ten-night ship to the peninsula is a fixed nine thousand or so. Bhutan’s daily fee is fixed at a hundred dollars a night by law. The simulator lists the typical fixed items for each place and lets you add your own; the total that comes out is often dominated by two lines.
The cheap version of the expensive place
Almost every expensive place on this site has a version that costs a fraction of the headline and sees most of the same thing. A mokoro day from Maun sees the Okavango’s channels for a twentieth of a camp’s price. A homestay on Kri island dives Raja Ampat’s Dampier Strait for a fifth of a liveaboard. A mobile safari camping in Moremi sees the same animals as the lodges. Island hopping in the Galápagos halves the cruise. The cheap version usually trades comfort and range for the money, and it is always the version to take if the choice is between it and not going.
The expensive version of the cheap place
It also exists, and it is sometimes worth it. In Namibia the lodge inside the park gate costs three times the one outside and buys the extra hour of dawn on the dunes, which is the whole point of the trip. In Torres del Paine the refugio beds cost real money and remove the tent from the pack, which for a first trek in that wind is the difference between a hard week and a miserable one.
What the bands do not include
Flights, which dominate the total for anything outside Europe and are entered as a fixed item. Insurance, which in the ice and reef realms should cover an evacuation from the far side of the world and costs accordingly. Alcohol, which in Botswana and Svalbard costs what it costs. And the buffer day, which the previous field note put a price on.
Questions people ask
Which is the cheapest place on the site?
Ladakh, at around forty euros a day in the backpack band, followed by the Brazilian lagoons, Zhangjiajie and Wadi Rum. All four are in the mid-to-high band for wonder.
Which is the most expensive?
The Antarctic Peninsula, where a ten-night ship costs what a small car costs, followed by the top Okavango camps and Bwindi with its permit.
