A Place You’ve Never Been But Always Carried With You
I received an email from a client this week, for whom I’d previously planned a business trip extension in India. The gist? “We’re heading into semi-retirement and want to start thinking about our bucket list trips.” What’s not to love about this email? Dreaming big. Being proactive. Engaging their advisor early in the process will enable me to help cultivate their plans over the next five years. Most of all, I love to see people making sure their trips happen.
What makes a bucket list trip? There are places that live in us long before we ever set foot in them. Sometimes they’re sparked by a photograph, a sunlit temple crumbling quietly in the Cambodian jungle, or a powder-blue glacier calving into Arctic water. Other times, it’s a sentence in a novel, a smell in a market, a documentary voice-over that sends us Googling flight paths and best travel seasons before we can stop ourselves.
These places make their way into our inner mythology, the private map of longing we carry with us through the routines of everyday life. We file them away in the same category as “someday.” Someday, when the kids are older. Someday, when work settles down. Someday, when I’m not so tired, overwhelmed, or when I have an arbitrary amount of savings.
But time is funny. It doesn’t wait for “someday.” And too often, we look up to find that the dream has stayed just that, untouched, unplanned, and increasingly out of reach. This is the story of bucket list travel, and why it matters so much more than Instagram checkboxes and glossy countdown calendars suggest.
The Difference Between a Vacation and a Bucket List Journey
Vacations are wonderful. We need them. We crave the break, the sun, the cocktails, the dopamine rush of checking into a hotel and ordering fries by the pool. But bucket list travel is different. It asks more of us, and gives more in return.
It’s not just about escape. It’s about becoming. About seeing yourself reflected in the unfamiliar, cracked open by awe, and humbled by the sheer vastness of the world. It’s about standing on the deck of an expedition ship at the edge of Antarctica, watching a whale breach in the distance, and realizing how small and miraculous it all is.
It’s about watching the sun rise over the Taj Mahal, barefoot on cold marble, your breath fogging the morning air as centuries of history swell around you. It’s about hiking a sacred trail in Peru, aching and breathless at 13,000 feet, and feeling a kind of ancient presence settle over you, part altitude, part reverence. These aren’t trips you forget in six months. These are chapters in your life story. They are part of your legacy.
Why We Wait
The world is overflowing with reasons to wait.
Budgets. Schedules. Family needs. The complicated task of coordinating time zones and travel styles with people we love. And sometimes, though we don’t always admit it, we’re afraid to actually take the trip. Because what if it doesn’t live up to the dream? What if it changes us too much? Or not enough? What if we’re finally standing in that exact place we’ve imagined for years, and we still feel restless?
Bucket list travel carries emotional weight. It’s tied to identity, legacy, and purpose. Which makes it even more important not to leave it to chance. Because the reality is, most people don’t go.
Most people keep the dream polished and packed away. According to a 2023 survey by G Adventures, more than 80% of people have a list of dream destinations, but only 19% have made concrete plans to visit any of them. It’s not laziness. It’s life. But life also has a way of shifting quickly. Circumstances change. Health changes. The window of opportunity opens, and then quietly closes.
The Quiet Transformation of Big Travel
There’s a moment that happens on almost every bucket list journey. And it never looks the same twice. Sometimes it’s loud, like sobbing on a clifftop in Ireland after a year of grief. Sometimes it’s silent , like the feeling of a glacier moving beneath your boots, slower than a heartbeat but stronger than time. It’s a moment when you stop being the version of yourself that lives on autopilot.
You notice the way a particular kind of light filters through Himalayan mist. You feel your lungs open in Patagonia’s wind. You eat the best bowl of soup you’ve ever tasted on a cracked plastic stool in Hanoi, and realize you’ve never felt more alive. These are not postcard moments. They’re not always beautiful, or convenient, or even comfortable. But they stay with you. They become part of who you are.
A Collection of Possibilities
What counts as a “bucket list” trip depends entirely on the traveler. And that’s what makes them so interesting. Here are just a few kinds of journeys that tend to live on people’s long-held lists. Some are grand and remote, and some are surprisingly gentle.
The Expedition
Sailing the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic
Flying over the Drake Passage to land on the Antarctic Peninsula
Snorkeling the Galápagos with a marine biologist as your guide
The Immersion
Trekking with gorillas in Rwanda
Staying in a Bhutanese farmhouse during harvest season
Learning to cook thali in a Rajasthani kitchen with three generations of women
The Pilgrimage
Walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain
The Kumbh Mela in India
Tracing your ancestry through Ireland, Ghana, Armenia, or the American South
The Celebration
A sabbatical month in Bali
A 50th birthday safari in Kenya
A retirement rail journey across Japan or through the Rockies
The Pause
A slow solo week at a spa in Costa Rica
A cabin in Iceland with no plans but a stack of books and the aurora overhead
Watching stars in silence from a desert dome in Jordan
The destination matters. But what matters more is how you feel when you’re there.
The Role of Witness
One of the most underrated parts of a bucket list trip is having someone to witness it.
Whether it’s a partner, a best friend, a travel companion you just met, or even the person planning the trip for you, there’s something powerful about having someone to say, “You’re really here. You committed. You did this.”
Because the world will move on when you return. Your inbox will refill. Laundry will pile up. And the part of you that was cracked open in the Himalayas or the Amazon or the Atacama will be quietly folded back into daily life. But if someone else saw it too, if someone else knows what that moment meant to you, it lives on longer. You become more than the trip. You become the person who took the trip.
When You’re Ready
There’s no right time to go. There’s no perfect moment when the calendar clears, the budget aligns, and all your ducks are in a row. There is only a decision.
A decision to go now, or next year. To take the first step. To turn a dream into a plan.
To trust that the world will meet you wherever you are, and show you something you didn’t even know you were missing.
A Final Thought
Travel like this isn’t about collecting stamps in a passport or chasing Instagram likes. It’s about returning home a little bit different, a little bit braver. A little bit softer and a little more awake.
So if you’ve been carrying a place inside you, you need a strategy and a partner to make it happen. Ready to have a partner in making your bucket list trips happen? Send us an email at info@bestetravel.com.
