Different Sort of Luxury

“Forget hot showers, nice meals and clean sheets, walking New Zealand’s spectacular Milford Track is a luxury in itself,” Eric Arnold writes in a travel piece for Forbes. “Most of the time spent walking the Milford Track — a four-day, 53.5km walk — involves more marvelling than worrying about the surroundings. This is a delicate, sometimes unforgiving place open to fewer than 1 people each day. Walking Milford resembles Frodo’s long plod through the Lord of the Rings films (all shot in New Zealand, along with the two Hobbit movies to come), some of it through inviting, pristine, open meadows; some through dense, moss-draped beech forest; some over steep, rocky terrain that strains your desire to carry on; still more offering vertiginous panoramas.”