Paying for a Chance To Suffer in Silence

The rise of a restless affluent class, led by retiring baby boomers searching for meaning, has only hastened the trend. The toniest spas now compete to serve a sophisticated regimen, including nutrition "re-education," power yoga, spectacular mountain hikes and personal trainers to squire guests through the feng shui gym or a session of Zen archery. Body & Soul offers a rugged menu of yoga, kayaking and hiking, plus sessions of "life counseling" to "help people get back in the driver's seat of their lives," says Boyle. At all of them, talented chefs perform the daily miracle of making joyless dietetic fare (low salt, no meat, no dairy, no sugar) palatable.

No one seems to do upmarket deprivation better than the Russians, where one tour operator sponsors "confidence building" tours for tenderfoots, who pay a bundle to be ordered around by former Marines and Special Forces veterans of the war in Chechnya. Another caters exclusively to the ultrarich, offering corporate high-rollers a chance to take a break from the ennui of the golden life by dressing in rags and panhandling in some of Moscow's meanest streets. Who signs on for this experience at $3,000 a day? "The oligarchs love it!" says Sergei Kniazev, head of the Kniazev Event Agency, which runs the "bum tours." Founded four years ago, Kniazev says his business is now at its peak, with eight to 12 rich Russians asking for a tour each weekend.

Deprivation does not come cheap. Prices of the more conventional boot-camp vacations range from $300 to $500 a day. (A week at the Golden Door, with its intense fitness program, in Escondido, California, runs a bracing $7,995.) Just why well-heeled travelers are willing to pay five-star rates to run themselves ragged while consuming fewer calories than a supermodel is a mystery for a thousand eggheads. To some industry analysts, travelers see their leisure time as an existential antidote to the modern-day pandemic of stress, sedentariness and overnourishment. In this sense, the detox spa is the new monastery, a retreat to nurture the body and spirit by eschewing all temptations and getting in touch with that inner Rocky.

But for others, beating oneself up on holiday may not be so different from everyday life. Many of the extreme-fitness tourists have pressure-cooker jobs in banks or the corporate jungle, where competition is fierce, the hours interminable and office politics treacherous. Knowingly or not, they play the same way they work. "Most of these folks are masochists anyway," says Vince Wolfington, former chairman of the World Travel & Tourism Council. "They all have the fancy cars and expensive boats. So what else can you do? Killing yourself on holiday is a kind of cachet for the wealthy. It's a mark that a person has arrived."

Body & Soul's Boyle sees things a little differently. "A lot of people come because they are frustrated in their careers and in life and looking for something," he says. "They feel they are neglecting their bodies and want to prove to themselves they can still make it." But making it, he hastens to warn, does not come with room service. "You aren't going to get healthy with just facials and body rubs. But if you get off your ass and walk five miles—now that could be the start of something life-changing."

Lili learned the hard way. One afternoon in Brazil, where Boyle once ran a bikini boot camp, she found herself in a sea kayak, battling headwinds and whitecaps in the teeth of a nasty Atlantic storm. So she doubled down and just kept on paddling "through the pain" to land. "My whole body ached and I was exhausted but exhilarated as well," she says. "It showed me I can do anything if I put my mind to it. All you have to do is believe in yourself." And in the strict taskmasters who are taking your money.

With Anna Nemtsova in Moscow

© 2008