There are places we have wanted to see since childhood. After all, everyone has a dream of their own.

Foods we want to taste in the places they come from. Mountains we want to climb. Roads we want to drive. Places with a history that might send a shiver down your spine. And then there are a few ideas that may be just a little crazy.

Some dreams have already come true. Others already have a date in the calendar.

And some are still simply sitting on the list under one big word:

“Someday.”

But we do not want to create a list that we will eventually tick off completely.

Quite the opposite.

We hope that every time we complete one item, two more ideas will take its place.

This is our WandersKaty Bucket List.

✅ DONE
🔜 PLANNED
○ SOMEDAY...

○ See Mount Ararat from Armenia — during our last visit it was hidden behind the clouds

✅ Spend a night under the stars in Wadi Rum

✅ Explore the mountains of North Macedonia

✅ Go paddleboarding surrounded by mountains

🔜 Hike Angels Landing

🔜 See the Grand Canyon

🔜 Explore Yosemite National Park

🔜 Stand among the giant sequoias

🔜 See Bryce Canyon

🔜 Drive through Death Valley

🔜 See Monument Valley

🔜 Stand beneath Mount Fuji

🔜 Visit Tokyo

○ See the Northern Lights

○ Travel to Patagonia

○ See Torres del Paine

○ Trek in the Himalayas

○ See Mount Everest, even if only from a distance

○ Visit Machu Picchu

○ See Iguazú Falls

○ See Victoria Falls

○ Go on safari in Kenya — ideally as part of a road trip through the country

○ Visit Ngorongoro

○ See whales in the wild

○ See orangutans in Borneo

○ See an active volcano

○ Climb a volcano in Indonesia

○ Drive through the Norwegian fjords

○ Visit the Lofoten Islands

○ Visit the Faroe Islands

○ Road trip around Iceland

○ See Salar de Uyuni

○ Visit the Atacama Desert

○ See the enormous sand dunes of Namibia

✅ Road trip through Jordan

✅ Road trip through North Macedonia and Kosovo

✅ Visit Southern Vietnam

✅ Road trip through Armenia and Georgia — and we definitely want to return

✅ Ride an airboat through the Everglades

✅ Visit Kennedy Space Center

✅ Visit Universal Studios Orlando

🔜 Visit Universal Studios Japan in Osaka

🔜 Road trip through the American West

🔜 Drive historic Route 66

🔜 Los Angeles → Grand Canyon → Utah → Las Vegas → Death Valley → Yosemite → San Francisco

○ Drive Iceland’s Ring Road

○ Travel around Norway in a campervan

○ Road trip through the Scottish Highlands

🔜 Road trip through Morocco

○ Drive through Namibia

○ Road trip through South Africa

○ Explore the mountains of New Zealand

○ Road trip through Australia — especially Western Australia

○ Travel across Canada

○ Explore Alaska

○ Road trip through Patagonia

○ One day, set off on a road trip with no planned return date

✅ See the ancient city of Petra

✅ Visit Luxor

✅ Visit Karnak

✅ Explore the Valley of the Kings

✅ See the Temple of Hatshepsut

🔜 Visit Alcatraz

🔜 Visit Hiroshima

🔜 Explore Kyoto

🔜 Visit Himeji Castle

🔜 Explore the temples of Nara

✅ Visit Pompeii

✅ See the Colosseum in Rome

○ Visit Angkor Wat

○ Visit Machu Picchu

○ Explore Mayan ruins in Mexico

○ Visit Chichén Itzá

○ Visit Teotihuacán

○ See the Terracotta Army

○ Walk along the Great Wall of China

○ Visit the Acropolis in Athens

✅ Explore Istanbul and its Byzantine heritage

✅ Visit Jerusalem

○ Visit Persepolis

○ Explore Samarkand

○ Discover the ancient sites of Ethiopia

Dark tourism and places with a difficult past

This part of the list is a little different.

We are not interested in history only when it is beautiful.

In fact, we are often even more drawn to places with a complicated, tragic or simply unusual past.

✅ Explore the abandoned Rolava mining complex

✅ Visit the uranium mining sites around Jáchymov

✅ Explore industrial Alaverdi

🔜 Visit Alcatraz

🔜 Visit Hiroshima

○ Visit Chernobyl and Pripyat one day, if the situation ever makes it safe to do so

○ Explore the abandoned island of Hashima

○ Visit the Paris Catacombs

✅ Visit Auschwitz

○ Visit Mauthausen

✅ Explore Sarajevo and places connected with the war in Bosnia

✅ Visit Mostar and learn about Bosnia’s wartime history

○ Explore Albania’s bunkers

○ Discover abandoned Soviet structures across the former USSR

✅ Explore Berlin and places connected with the Cold War

🔜 Visit abandoned towns of the American West

🔜 Explore ghost towns in Nevada

🔜 Visit Bodie, California

○ Visit S-21 Prison in Cambodia

✅ Explore the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam

Foods we want to taste one day

And now for one very important part of travelling.

Food.

Because some countries stay in our memory because of their monuments.

Others stay there because of what we ate.

✅ Eat pho in Vietnam

✅ Eat Vietnamese food from street stalls

✅ Try an authentic Vietnamese bánh mì

✅ Taste Jordanian hummus and local cuisine

✅ Eat Georgian khachapuri

✅ Drink homemade Georgian wine directly from a local winemaker

✅ Eat burek in the Balkans

🔜 Eat authentic sushi in Japan

🔜 Eat ramen in Tokyo

🔜 Try Japanese wagyu

🔜 Eat kimchi in Korea

✅ Eat an American burger

🔜 Stop at a classic diner on Route 66

✅ Have a huge American breakfast

✅ Eat pizza in Naples

✅ Eat authentic carbonara in Rome

✅ Eat pastel de nata in Portugal

✅ Eat paella in Spain

✅ Eat real Greek gyros

✅ Eat Turkish kebab in Turkey

✅ Have a traditional Turkish breakfast

○ Eat Moroccan tagine

○ Drink tea somewhere in the middle of Morocco

○ Eat tacos in Mexico

○ Try Peruvian ceviche

○ Eat an Argentinian steak

○ Try Indian street food — and hope we survive

○ Eat Pad Thai in Thailand

○ Try mango sticky rice

○ Eat Korean street food

○ Have dim sum in Hong Kong

○ Eat Peking duck in Beijing

○ Eat at a night market in Taiwan

○ Eat fresh fish in a small Japanese fishing village

○ Have an Australian BBQ

○ Eat a meal prepared by a local family somewhere where we do not share a single common language

Experiences we want to have at least once in our lives

✅ Fly a drone over a place we had previously known only from photographs

✅ Stay with local people

✅ Travel with nothing but a backpack

🔜 Ride the Shinkansen

🔜 Experience Tokyo at night

✅ Fly in a hot-air balloon

✅ Go bungee jumping

✅ Try a speleo via ferrata

✅ Sleep in the desert

○ Sleep beneath the Northern Lights

○ Stay in a traditional Japanese ryokan

○ Spend a night in a Buddhist temple

○ Bathe in a Japanese onsen

○ Travel on a traditional boat somewhere in Asia

○ Spend several days travelling by night trains

✅ Ride a dog sled

○ Watch camel racing

○ Swim with manta rays

○ Snorkel on one of the world’s most beautiful coral reefs

○ Dive at a shipwreck

○ Sleep in a treehouse

○ Stay in an igloo or glass cabin beneath the Northern Lights

○ Spend several days in the mountains completely away from civilisation

○ Travel through part of the world in a campervan

○ Set off somewhere with only a one-way ticket

Places we simply want to see

There does not have to be a deeper reason for everything on this list.

Some places we simply want to see.

○ Yellowstone

○ Alaska

○ Hawaii

○ Canada

○ Banff

○ Vancouver

○ Mexico

○ Cuba

○ Costa Rica

○ Peru

○ Argentina

○ Chile

○ Brazil

○ Patagonia

○ Iceland

○ Norway

○ Lofoten Islands

○ Faroe Islands

○ Scotland

○ Ireland

○ Azores

○ Namibia

○ Tanzania

○ South Africa

○ Madagascar

○ Zanzibar

○ Kenya

○ Nepal

○ India

○ Sri Lanka

○ Thailand

○ Cambodia

○ Laos

○ Northern Vietnam

○ Indonesia

○ Philippines

○ Malaysia

○ Taiwan

○ Hong Kong

○ China

○ Mongolia

○ Uzbekistan

○ Australia

○ Tasmania

○ New Zealand

What we want to achieve with WandersKaty one day

For us, a bucket list is not only a list of countries.

It is also a reminder of how far we have come — and where we would like to go next.

✅ Create our own travel website

✅ Start writing our own travel stories and guides

🔜 Publish 100 articles

🔜 Build a community of people who keep coming back to WandersKaty

🔜 Bring regular readers to our website

○ Write about travel for a magazine

○ Visit 50 countries

○ Visit 75 countries

○ Visit 100 countries

○ Set foot on every continent

○ One day, look back at an old version of this Bucket List and realise how many things that once seemed impossible actually happened

When we are 60...

○ Still travel together

○ Still be willing to sleep in strange accommodation occasionally just because it is cheap

○ Still be able to pack everything into a backpack

○ Return to some of the places we visited when we were younger

○ Repeat our first big journey together

○ Look at WandersKaty and see several decades of our lives recorded there

○ And most importantly, never lose the urge to say:

“Hey, we haven’t been there yet.”

This list will never be finished

And that is exactly how we want it.

We do not want to compete over how many countries we have visited.

We do not want to visit a place just so we can say that we have been there.

We want to taste things. Explore. Take photographs. Walk through the mountains. Discover history. Get lost occasionally. Feel a little nervous sometimes. Meet people. Reach places that, only a few years ago, we knew only from a map.

And above all, we always want to have something ahead of us.

So if you come back to this article in a year, it will probably be even longer.

And by then, another twenty ideas will probably have appeared at the bottom of the list.

Because we believe the best Bucket List is not the one you eventually complete. It is the one that grows with you throughout your life.