1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler's Life List

The Story of This Book

Is it nature or nurture that sends a person out onto the Road—that whispers in one’s ear that it’s time to take off and make for the horizon, just to see what’s out there?

The urge to travel—to open our minds and move beyond the familiar—is as old as man himself. It’s what drove the ancient Romans to visit Athens’s Acropolis and Verona’s amphitheater. It’s what sent Marco Polo off on his momentous journey east, and what moved St. Augustine of Hippo to write, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page.” Whether we go to London for the weekend or to a place that’s utterly alien, travel changes us, sometimes superficially, sometimes profoundly. It is a classroom without walls.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you about my own wanderlust. Family legend (never proven) has it that we’re somehow related to Mark Twain, America’s great storyteller and also one of the preeminent globetrotters of his day. How then to explain my mother’s reaction when I had my own first Great Adventure?

It was the late 1950s, and Atlantic City was as exotic and unknown to me as Shangri-la—all sand and sea, hotels and boardwalk, and the intimation of greater things just beyond what I could see from the family beach blanket. I set off at the first opportunity, but after what seemed only a few precious minutes of intoxicating discovery (in fact several hours), I was snatched up by my apoplectic mother and a cadre of relieved lifeguards and brought back to the roost. This is my earliest memory: I had heard the siren call of the great, global beyond, and I had answered. I was hooked. I was four.

Fast-forward to college graduation. Campus buddies were heading straight for Wall Street apprenticeships, international banking programs, and family business obligations, but I made a beeline for the airport and my own private Grand Tour through the marvels of Italy and its neighbors. Could one make a living off la dolce vita? I was amazed when my first articles got published, but then I realized: one could. Many guidebooks and innumerable articles later, I found myself at a round table facing publisher Peter Workman and his right-hand editor, the late Sally Kovalchick, who told me about their desire to compile the world’s most enticing and intriguing treasures between two covers, and their belief that I was up to the challenge. I was on board.

When it came time to actually do it, though—to choose from the nearly bottomless grab bag of the world’s possibilities, both legendary and unsung—I realized I was in for a lengthy battle with philosophy and methodology and all the questions anyone who flips through this book is bound to ask. How did I arrive at these particular destinations and events? What were my criteria? How to explain the wide range, from undeniably glorious far-flung mysteries to apparently mundane backyard beauties? The inclusion of the Taj Mahal and the Sistine Chapel makes sense, but why give the Pork Pit in Montego Bay the same weight as Paris’s legendary Taillevent? Am I really implying that an agritourist B&B on a Tuscan wine-producing estate is just as worthy as Bangkok’s storied Oriental Hotel, where Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling were regulars? Does the weirdness of Roswell hold up against the magic of Tikal? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince had it easier when he asked the geographer, “What place would you advise me to visit now?” and was told, “The planet Earth. It has a good reputation.”

In the final analysis, the common denominator I chose was a simple one: that each place impress upon the visitor— and, I hope, upon the reader— some sense of the earth’s magic, integrity, wonder, and legacy. That was the standard I applied, across every continent, from the conspicuous and predictable to the small and humble, from spiritual spots like Bagan in Myanmar to temporal ones like Hong Kong’s shopping districts, from natural wonders like the Grand Canyon to manmade ones like Petra, Jordan’s fabled “lost city”—life experiences all. To compile my list, I drew upon the decades of insatiable travel that followed my epiphany on the sands of Atlantic City. I pored over hundreds of travel books and glossy magazines and spoke to scores of tourism boards and PR agencies effusively loyal to their clients—then I sleuthed out the real story on my own. I picked the brains of travel colleagues and peripatetic friends, and queried anyone stepping off a bus, train, or plane who was smiling. At countless dinner parties, I listened while complete strangers scribbled the names of magical places on cocktail napkins, or swore me to secrecy and then whispered their favorite destinations in my ear.

In the seven years it took me to research and write this formidable project, I was reminded time and again that travel is always personal, and that no two people walk away from the same experience with the same memories. What it came down to, in the end, is that each of the places in this book is truly, completely, and undeniably inspiring—through the ages or to the modern world—often both—to the simply curious traveler as well as to poets, adventurers, painters, pilgrims, scholars, and travel writers.

“Travel,” wrote my maybe-ancestor Twain in The Innocents Abroad, “is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” Travel dispels many of our bad impressions, confirms the positive, and promises innumerable surprises. It opens our eyes to exotic places like Zanzibar, Katmandu, Machu Picchu, and Lalibela—names familiar to us through films, books, and tales, but whose reality is so much more than they could ever explain. In the flesh, it shows us why even the most clichéd travel experiences— riding a gondola in Venice, taking a Turkish bath in Turkey, braving Times Square on New Year’s Eve—are perennially popular. With travel, our minds become more curious, our hearts more powerful, and our spirits more joyous. And once the mind is stretched like that, it can never return to its original state.

The world today is a smaller place than it was even twenty years ago, and while the romantic concept of Ultima Thule—what Webster’s describes as “any far-off, unknown region”—may still be found in the otherworldly landscapes of Namibia, the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and the timeless Nadaam horse games of Mongolia’s Ulaanbaatar, the fact remains that these places all lie only a day or two’s journey away, thanks to today’s monumental travel infrastructure. What does this do to our sense of adventure, of exploring the Other? For me, it comes down to a matter of viewpoint: As the Sherpa said to Edmund Hillary on the slopes of Mount Everest, some people travel only to look, while others come to see. Some road warriors can speed from New York to L.A. without registering a thing; I can walk around my mid-Manhattan block and come home with a carton of milk and stories to tell. In the end, the number of miles covered has nothing to do with the real pleasures of travel; the inherent beauty of the world and the discovery it promises are all around us.

In this time of global uncertainty, even the intrepid might feel inclined to stick closer to home base, or to retreat into armchair travel—and even this can be rewarding. I can shut my eyes and hear the sound of loons again on Squam Lake, or the flutter of prayer flags outside a Tibetan monastery in Llasa. I can smell the spices of the market in the ancient medina of Fez, or the floating aroma of fritto misto in the cobbled backstreets of an Italian Riviera village. This is my moveable feast, the memories that sustain me until my next ticket is in hand, my next Great Adventure about to begin.

1,000 Places to See Before You Die is my own personal short list of dream trips. While the number daunted me at first, I came to realize there were a thousand times a thousand possibilities. . . . Perhaps I’ll save them for a sequel, or for another life. Not every entry is for everybody, but show me someone who won’t find enough between these two covers to keep busy for the next few decades. Never a travel snob, I confess I’ve never understood the appeal of certain must-do’s (though I’ve happily included them), like playing the finest golf courses in Scotland or going bungee-jumping in New Zealand, but these activities may well figure into your own game plan. I know I’ll raise eyebrows by including unconventional destinations such as Calcutta and Madagascar, arduous choices that some travelers might avoid, but I consider them deeply moving and insightful windows into the human experience. The same goes for Chicago’s landmark Superdawg hot dog stand, whose inclusion will be questioned only by those who have never been there.

The number of hotels I’ve included might also need a brief explanation. A longtime hotel buff, my opinion about cities both large and small is always greatly influenced by where I hang my hat and unpack my bag. Can one even think of visiting London without enjoying high tea at the Ritz? Or, when in Singapore, having a Singapore Sling where it originated, at the legendary Raffles Hotel? Isn’t Singita safari lodge on the periphery of Kruger National Park as inspirational as the game viewing? And isn’t Sweden’s Ice Hotel the ultimate hoot?

Other unforgettable memories I have not been able to re-create for this book, like the day my driver in Casablanca took me to his mother’s home for Saturday lunch when I asked him who served the best couscous in town, or the time I somehow became the guest of honor at a stranger’s fourday wedding celebration in Cairo. From experiences like these I learned that camel meat’s not bad, and serendipity really is the best tour guide.

Any trip can be fraught with disappointment: Expectations are always high, and anything can go wrong. Here are a few suggestions for both first-time and inveterate travelers: More important than packing a bag full of money, pack a bag full of patience and curiosity; allow yourself—encourage yourself—to be sidetracked and to get lost. There’s no such thing as a bad trip, just good travel stories to tell back home. Always travel with a smile and remember that you’re the one with the strange customs visiting someone else’s country. Relying on the kindness of strangers isn’t naive—there are good people wherever you go. And, finally, the more time you spend coming to understand the ways of others, the more you’ll understand yourself. The journey abroad reflects the one within—the most unknown and foreign and unmapped landscape of them all, the ultimate terra incognita. As Mr. Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”