Staff - Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the Worlds Greatest Trips

The starkly beautiful Monument Valley in the Navajo Tribal Park, U.S.A., was the sweeping and dramatic backdrop to countless cowboy movies.

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L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN -P UBLICATION D ATA
Journeys of a lifetime : 500 of the worlds greatest trips.
p. cm.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4262-1608-4
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4262-0125-7
1. Voyages and travels. I. National Geographic Society (U.S.) G465.J687 2007
910.4dc22

09/RRDW-CML/3

v3.1

A pastoral scene with curious onlooker greets the passerby at a rural crossroads in the Derbyshire Dales, England.

Two novice monks gaze across the moat at the 12th-century Khmer Hindu temple of Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

A merica is a nation of list keepers and, as Ive made my way through 65 countries and counting, Ive inevitably assembled my share of list-worthy travel experiences. Steaming down the St. Lawrence Seaway, past carpets of evergreen, dolphins off the prow as we forge deep into the North American continent. Clattering by train over moors, through glens, skirting the heather-clad mountains of the Scottish Highlands. Gaping from the railing of the Star Ferry at the urban dazzle of Hong Kong harbor. Drifting down Keralas azure backwaters as sari-draped women work rice paddies in southern India. Cruising under an Aegean sun, blessed by a sense of ancient times, in the helter-skelter maze of the Greek islands. Rollercoastering down Highway 1 toward Big Sur in an open convertible past Americas greatest seascapes. These are some of my happiest travel memories, burnished by time and still magical decades later. And they are among the 500 journeys of a lifetime celebrated in this book. This book is about the going, not just the arriving. It showcases wonderful, indelible, life-changing journeys, with terrific stops along the way. Here are 500 places that offer an unparalleled diversity of landscapeocean, mountain, hill and dale, hamlet and cityand a rich mix of locomotion, by rail and car, on foot and on water. I hope you use this trove of trips to strike out into the world. And as you do, seek out the true and the authentic. Be willing to get lost. Be open to surprise and serendipity. And appreciate each routes sense of place, its uniqueness. The pages that follow illuminate some of the worlds most remarkable destinations. But as we cherish them, we must also be sensitive that some places are, in a sense, endangered species, vulnerable to the pressures of visitation. We must take care not to ruin what we love most. And there is much to love in the places in this book. So go, explore, and see the world.

Keith Bellows
Editor-in-Chief, National Geographic Traveler magazine

Traditional longtail boats sit at anchor in the turquoise waters of the Andaman Sea, off Thailands western coast. You can take a six-day junk cruise through the sea, visiting some of its 3,500 islands.

T raveling by water provides a new dimension. Rivers reach hidden places where roads can never go. The Earths most dramatic coastlines, seen from offshore, are revealed in ways not possible from land. The worlds most inspiring voyages are never simply journeys from one port to another. The sights and scenes encountered, the exotic or historic destinations, are only the beginning of the story. The vessels themselves, and the waters traveled, play an equal part in these adventures. A raft-trip along Madagascars Mangoky River brings glimpses of dancing lemurs. Canoes glide up the Orinoco into the heart of a South American jungle. Ferries in the Aegean Sea follow the trails of ancient Greeces gods and monsters. An icebreaker ventures into the Arctic fastnesses off Lapland. Airboats churn past alligators in the Florida Everglades. No continent is left unvisited. There are comfortable cruises for those desiring to drift and daydream, as well as more challenging options for adventurers eager to clamber up a mainmast or paddle a canoe past villages unaltered for a thousand years.