Our Travel Goal: 50 Before 30

It feels appropriate to write about our big travel goal at the beginning of a new year. 2023 is set to be a pretty epic year of travel and we’re already trying to work out ways of doing as much as possible while balancing our workload, meeting friends and family, and saving for the future.

So, our big travel goal. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a mental list of all the places I want to go and all the things I want to see and do.

When I was around 7 or 8, I used to get the National Geographic Kids magazine every single month. Although my parents were keen travellers and took us on fantastic holidays throughout my childhood, I really feel that this magazine had a huge impact on my travel aspirations from a young age.

I used to sit and cut out pages with the Pyramids, Machu Picchu, and the Great Barrier Reef to stick on my wardrobe. One in particular which stood out and has remained with me, is the desire to visit Malawi, and more specifically, to go to the Lilongwe Monkey Sanctuary. In my childhood fantasies, I imagined one day I would be a conservationist at this exact monkey sanctuary. Now, my goals may have changed a bit, but it is still one of the top places I want to visit one day.

What I mean by all this, is that I’ve been gradually adding to this mental list of places I want to travel over the years. And I think most people probably do, right?

So naturally, Joe and I have a number of travel ideas, goals, and plans for the near and distant future. Where we want to travel, why we want to visit those places, and when we want to visit.

While the list of specific places and sites is looooong, we’ve decided on a slightly more achievable and less specific goal which we hope to accomplish within the next 5 years.

Before we turn 30, we want to have each visited 50 countries.

Now that may sound crazy, but fear not, I don’t mean we’re going to start from scratch. I’ve been to 29 countries according to the Been app, and Joe has been to 22. That means I have 21 and Joe has 28 to go. The tricky thing will be when we visit countries that one of us has already been to – like Singapore for example, I recently ticked that off but Joe already visited years ago with his family.

This idea was kind of inspired by travel vloggers Kara and Nate on my part, as they set out on their travels a few years ago with the goal of visiting 100 countries, which they achieved just before the pandemic in 2020.

With some of the ideas we have for this year in Asia, we should be well on our way to hitting 50 countries in time, especially considering Joe will be racking up his numbers as we visit places I’ve already been and he hasn’t. However, we’ve not got a rigid plan to stick to, so it’ll be exciting to see where we end up!

Where do you think we should add to our list? And where is on your bucket list?

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