Bucket lists

After countless hours perusing other travel blogs I’ve noticed that most of them have one thing in common – besides talking about travel in one way or another – and that is a bucket list of places the blogger wants to go to. In some cases, if they are trying to make it more interesting  they add a twist to it, for example, say what they want to do at X e.g. instead of simply adding Victoria Falls they say Bungee jumping at Victoria Falls.

All in all I have nothing against bucket lists, thing is, that’s not what I’m traveling for.I don’t want to simply tick of places from a list, or add pins to a map, I don’t want to rush from place to place just so that at the end of the day I can say “I have been there”.  No, Bucket lists wont do for me. Mainly because I don’t care where I’m going. I’ll be just as excited about a trip to Paris as I’ll be about a trip to rural Eritrea. Don’t get me wrong, I like bucket lists, and I always read them when I find them in other travel blogs, (If for no other reason that they offer a great insight into the person behind the blog). It’s just they are not for me. Or perhaps its just that my bucket list includes everywhere in planet earth.

Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson had it right when he said

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

So yes, for me the great love affair is to experience new things, to share moments with and learn from new and different people from diverse cultures. I want to understand the world as a whole not as a collection of  disparate notions and ideals. I want to feel at home in every corner.

You are probably thinking my goal is absurd, not realistic, that it needs to be narrowed down, and maybe you are right but ultimately it’s MY goal. And unless someone tries it (i.e me) we’ll never know how absurd and unrealistic it is. Or is it?