DREAMS OF TRAVEL

These days, travel writing has turned into the very dull practice of making elaborate lists. One million zillion places to see before you die. 553 of the world's top hotels, the top ten beaches in America. Even credit card companies have jumped in and are now pushing ads that are all about life's “to do's”. Human beings only survive the quotidian by taking tally of their dreams daily, and now the media is preying upon that last bit of sacred meditation. It gets tiresome, and yet I too am guilty of writing such listicles, ranking one destination over another, deciding the ‘best of'. Secretly though, I believe in totally spontaneous travel. Let the place you end up count for what it is. Travel where you can get to and throw away the list.

That said, I shall reject the trend of lists by making up my own. A list of travel dreams that are constant, like the food cravings you can't escape. It is an endless list—to delineate the globe is a fool's wish. I am quite grateful for all the spots on the globe upon which my toes have landed and feel that I've been fairly lucky thus far. But since people are always asking me where it is that I want to go next, here's my answer. Part of it, at least:

+ Paris, any day, anytime, any how

+ Atacama desert, Chile

+ Djibouti

+ Hike from Spain to France via Andorra

+ Riverboat from Kisangani to Kinshasa, Congo (DRC)

+ Mauritanian coast

+ North Pole

+ A beach in the Comoros

+ West Papua/Irian Jaya

+ Sudan, just because

+ Driving a Soviet-made car across the length of Saskatchewan

+ South Pole for the winter

+ Peruvian Amazon

+ Lake Malawi

+ Madagascar: a month, a bike, and a large water bottle

+ Sri Lanka

+ The Okapi Reserve in northeast Congo (DRC)

+ Mali

+ San Marino

+ Scotland, Scotland, Scotland. One time is never enough.

+ Eastern Greenland

+ Donegal

+ Kabul

+ Libyan desert

+ Aral Sea

+ Stewart Island, New Zealand

+ Dominica, the island, not the republic

+ One year without ever leaving New York City's Chinatown

+ Buenos Aires

+ Cartagena

+ Anonymous in Karachi

+ Northern Manitoba

+ St. Lawrence Island, Alaska

+ Big Bend National Park, Texas

+ Ni'ihau, Hawaiian Islands

+ Labrador

+ Walking the length of Benin

+ A desert truck caravan crossing Niger

+ St. Pierre & Miquelon

+ Cocos Island, Costa Rica

+ Lake Baikal, winter and summer

+ Two weeks, hiking boots but no map, Hong Kong

+ Mosquitia, Honduras

+ the national parks of Chad

+ Mandeville, Jamaica

+ Darien National Park, Panama

+ Yemen

+ Laos

+ Suriname

+ Bolivia

+ Falkland Islands

+ Uzbekistan

+ Samothráki, Greece

+ Trans-Siberian, obviously

+ Gabon

+ Portugal

+ Mauritius

+ Jaipur

+ Borneo

+ Cook Islands

+ Ross ice shelf, Antarctica

+ any island I can get my feet on

+ Botswana

+ Great Barrier Reef by dive boat

+ Rio de Janeiro in January

+ Caprivi strip

+ Svalbard

+ Montenegro

+ Burma

+ Tibet

+ Phillipines

+ Hokkaido

+ Haiti

*Dreams are listed in no particular order; All dreams are created equal.