In the last few years, I’ve traveled more on my own than I’ve ever done before. It took me as long as 2003 (the summer after my 23rd birthday) to even travel anywhere outside Norway and Sweden. Back then, I did so with my parents and my stepdad’s parents (sorta-grandparents, you could say), and we had a full two weeks in Zalakaros, Hungary, with overnight stops in Denmark, Germany and Austria on the way, travelling by road (more specifically, using a small minibus). Since then, the taste for travel abroad has just increased.

I’ve been on vacation with my parents many times before, but I took my first vacation trip alone in the summer 0f 2007, to Tønsberg. I was originally going there to experience a concert with a Norwegian artist (Øystein Sunde) who had a show running there through the summer, but I also ran across a music festival that was happening at the same time as I was there, so I got my first and, I’m sad to say, quite possibly my last taste of an actual music festival (I quickly found out that I was already a little bit too old for doing festival camps and such). It was a fun experience, though, and it soon expanded with alone vacations to Copenhagen in the fall of 2008, to Las Vegas and Orlando in the summer of 2009, and Stockholm in the fall of 2010.

In the later months of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, I started dreaming about other vacation destinations I’d really want to see before I die, and in early February 2011, I finally decided to make a list of destinations and put them on a map. I used Wikipedia to find possible destinations I found interesting, as well as the map coordinates for these, and the Google Maps advanced interface (JavaScript API) to plot the destinations onto a map and  include information boxes for each. Even that part was an interesting experience for me, as I’m not exactly new to programming such code.

I’ve already visited some of these destinations before, but I’d love to explore them some time in the future. I dream to some day travel around the world, taking down one destination at a time, almost non-stop, experiencing each destination for 1-3 weeks (depending on the destination, of course). I imagine it would take up to 3-4 years and a big load of money to do this in “one shot”, so I probably won’t be able to take this long dream journey until my old retirement days. Until then, I’ll just take in some of these destinations, one at a time.

Green markers show places I’ve been to, but would like to go to again. Orange markers are destinations with issues (comments in the info boxes for these), but I’d like to go to once things get better. That one light yellow (or off-white) marker is my home (and the starting/ending point of the journey around the world). Purple markers are all other destinations I want to go to.

Worth mentioning: the destinations Delhi, Agra and Jaipur in India are part of the tourist circuit called the Golden Triangle, and include the Taj Mahal in Agra. If I go here, I will start in Delhi and travel to the other two destinations along this trek via a luxury train round-trip, returning to Delhi at the end. I say “luxury train”, as this would be a much more comfortable option than, say, “lesser” options. Then again, if someone who has traveled this route before, I’m always open for suggestions (even if my trip to these destinations could be a lot further into the future). Use my contact page to provide suggestions.