Life list professionals (these beings exist) always advise people to try avoid more disappointments for themselves by setting too many goals to be accomplished. It’s kind of true because, what’s the last time you ever gone through your entire to-do list? With an entire globe to choose from and very little time, the “so much to achieve, yet little time” maxim eventually makes sense.
Now, since you cannot visit every other place on the planet within the limited time span you have, you got to act smartly. You’ve got to choose only the best and put them at the top of your to-do list. You don’t need to make a repeat of the places you’ve already visited, so what you need is something completely new yet breathtaking. Here are the top five destinations you need to pay a visit before it dawns to you that time is not in your favor.
Mesa Verde
When you visit the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, you’ll easily imagine how the lives of the ancestral Pueblo Indians, who built the cliffs about 800 years ago, was like. The Pueblos used to grow squash, beans and corns on mesa and dwelled in simple pit houses years ranging back to AD 600.
If you don’t mind crawling tunnels or climbing ladders, then Mesa Verde has a lot of sites that your tour, including North America’s largest cliff dwellings. In some of the cliffs, there are ceilings that are hearth smoke blackened.
Pompeii
The history of Pompeii sounds like a tragic experience in Greek history. Originally, settlers flocked the Roman Port city due to the fertility of the soils which was as a result of Mount Vesuvius volcanic ash. The same volcano then erupted and doomed the city with about 20,000 inhabitants at around AD 79. As a present day visitor of Pompeii, the real thrill comes from the ancient life of the Romans that has been preserved for many centuries below the volcanic ash. There are graffiti still covering walls. The most moving sites lie in Garden of Fugitives, displaying plaster casts of a number of victims during the last moments.
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal is India’s pride, experiencing over three million visitors every year for about a decade ago. This white marble cenotaph was completed more a century ago by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of Mumtaz Mahal, his wife who succumbed to death during childbirth in the year 1631. The monument rises on a site covering about 3 acres of land on Yamuna River region, in the Agra northern city. By visiting the Taj Mahal, visitors will discover the aura of the monument that’s been regarded as a symbol of love for a long time now.
Serengeti
Have you ever experienced the largest migration on land? Serengeti holds a large horde of wildebeests and other wildlife that travel over 300 miles across an endless space. This magnificent takes place every year, brought about by the primal survival drama that happens on an epic scale on Serengeti plains. At least over a million wildebeests together with hundreds of thousands of gazelles and zebras make a circuitous journey on the stretch of the vast grassland in northern Tanzania into Kenya. This is the only place on the planet where migration of such a magnitude take place, thus a good reason to experience it firsthand.
Galapagos Islands
Need a beautiful yet bizarre experience? The Galapagos Islands off the Ecuador coast have a conspicuously adapted kind of wildlife that attracted Charles Darwin in the 1835 when he visited. This later on kindled the discovery of evolution through natural selection, which is still on the island. In fact, the Galapagos is among several other islands that span the Equator about 620 miles off the Ecuador coast and are the most intact biologically on the planet.
Whether you choose to visit all of the places or just a couple of the destinations, you’ll eventually have an enriched life experience. A long list is just exhaustive and can be somewhat overwhelming. The above five are among some of the top destinations that you surely don’t have to miss. By starting with a simple to-do list that has about five destinations, you’ll eventually realize that you have visited most places during your life time than you can even remember.