I will not count how many countries I’ve been to, though I don’t think poorly of people who do. I will try to resist the temptation to count because I don’t want the number to be my motivation. I don’t want to travel just to tick a place off a list. I don’t want to say: “My name is X and I have been to Y out of Z countries,” though there’s really nothing wrong with that. I just don’t want to feel like I’ve left behind the rat race and joined the passport stamp race. I’m sure the number is much less than I would want it to be and much more than majority of the people in this planet will ever have the means to achieve.

I will travel because I want to, in the manner that I want to, and I will allow others the courtesy to do likewise. I hope never to catch myself saying those who can’t leave behind the comforts of home should stay home. I hope never to become the sort of person who thinks I have the right or omniscience to dictate who should and shouldn’t travel, and how. I hope never to get sucked into “traveler versus tourist,” a distinction that may have started as a well-meaning attempt to describe different levels of interaction with a place, but is now too often a none-too-subtle ploy to pat one’s own back: a traveler is me and a tourist is someone not like me. I will always endeavor to dive deep into a place, to hear the hidden drum beat to which it marches. But I will not judge those who rush from place to place, for it may be the only time they have, with the wealth they have or lack thereof, to see the places they’ve always longed to see with their own eyes. And I will not be the sort of self-validating traveler who thinks he is better than people who have never been outside their hometowns. I believe a person who stays in one corner of the earth all his life will still be capable of “broad, wholesome, charitable views of men,” no matter what Mark Twain says.

I will challenge myself. I will talk to locals and fellow travelers even though I usually keep to myself. I will try to capture an experience, in words and in images, the best way I know how, but I will also take time to just stay in the moment, that even if my notebook gets lost or my camera gets stolen, the memory will have been burned into my heart to keep forever.

I will not stop dreaming. Someday I will see Antarctic penguins, northern lights, cherry blossoms, Scottish highlands, sunny vineyards, gloomy cliffs, pink beaches, purple trees, glorious lions in the wild. And I will encourage people to dream. I will never tire of telling them: someday you will see Antarctic penguins, northern lights, cherry blossoms, Scottish highlands, sunny vineyards, gloomy cliffs, pink beaches, purple trees, and glorious lions in the wild.

I will inspire by being ordinary. There are too many “inspiring” stories of people who leave everything behind in order to travel the world. I will tell stories of people who stay, who find contentment in what would seem a humdrum life, who work and go home and save $10 a month in their travel fund, most of the paycheck having already gone to milk for their kids and educational funds and utility bills…and who, after 10 years, finally go on a 5-day trip to Paris. I will celebrate the courage of working with what you have, the heroism of looking at the banal and saying: “This is my life and I am happy with it.”