Overwhelming Options: How to avoid wanting to see the entire world when you simply can't in one lifetime?

Traveling is my favorite thing to do, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to do it often. I work from home and have a flexible schedule. This year, my schedule is freeing up a bit more and I've promised myself I'll do more things on my list, like visit NYC as often as I can, see more of Europe, and visit Africa. My priorities when I travel are experiencing new cultures, followed by scenery/hiking/outdoors.

One of my weaknesses (good in theory, but not possible in a lifetime) has always been wanting to see everything, and always assuming there's something I'm missing. For example, a number of years ago I drove through the entire USA in a car (20,000+ miles)... literally zig zagging across states. In hindsight, though I didn't know this at the time, there were numerous areas I would have rather spent more of my time in -- but I didn't know that ahead of time.

Last year I visited Oslo and Bergen in Norway. I saw most of the Southern part of the Country including a few fjords. It was beautiful, and I want to go back! But what about the rest of country? How much am I missing if I don't road trip around the entire country and see everything? Are there areas of vast open land that can be skipped so more time can be spent in certain areas?

Additionally, is there an itinerary of China (for example) you could cover in 3-4 weeks that would give you an overall sense of all of the different cultures, or would it take years of traveling through China to see everything?

As I plan more trips -- I'd like to go to Finland this year -- I look at a map of the Country and get overwhelmed. While the major cities seem to be in the South, it looks like there's so much to see in the North!

How do you find the areas of the world that are vastly uninhabited so you can skip those areas and focus on the parts where different people/cultures live?

Submitted February 21, 2020 at 08:58PM by manlymatt83 https://ift.tt/2HJwICf