Lately I have been referring a lot to the whole concept of the ‘bucket list’, and it occurred to me that I had never actually sat down and written down a comprehensive bucket list! Given how much ‘bucket list travel’ I have done this year, it only seemed fitting that I finally bite the bullet and do so!
This is a fairly comprehensive list, but I know there are things I will have forgotten and things I don’t even know that I want to do yet; so as this list changes, grows and as I ‘cross things off’, I will come back here and update it – linking blog posts about the experiences for your reading pleasure – just click on the photos!
So without further ado, here is the ULTIMATE Travelling The World Solo bucket list.
Swim with Humpback Whales
Swim with Orcas in Norway
Throw tomatoes at La Tomatina
Marvel at the rock structures of Lalibela
Go on a luxury safari
Go on a budget safari
Dogsled through Finnish lapland
See the Northern Lights
Visit all seven continents
Eat a meal with a giraffe
Feed a hyena with my mouth in Ethiopia
Do the worlds highest bungee jump
Watch the sun set over Uluru
Go gorilla watching in DR Congo
Visit the Pyramids of Giza
Explore the ocean trenches of Samoa
Take a dip in the Bimmah Sinkhole
Skydive over Dubai
Swim in the worlds largest swimming pool
Take a penguin selfie in Antarctica
See Komodo Dragons (from a safe distance)
Pretend to be Indiana Jones at The Lost City of Petra
Swim with Whale Sharks
Get messy at Holi Festival
Do an Antarctic polar plunge
Swim with Manta Rays
Freedive with sharks in Costa Rica
Float in the Dead Sea
See evolution in the Galapagos
Do a multi day kayaking expedition in Greenland
See a polar bear in Spitsbergen
Take a Quokka selfie on Rottnest Island
Explore the ancient temples of Bagan
Go zorbing in New Zealand
Play a game of Quidditch in England
See Wicked on Broadway
Visit the tribes of PNG
Swim in the Marina Bay Sands infinity pool
Spend a summer on the Amalfi Coast
See the sun rise over Angkor Wat
Embrace my inner nerd at Hobbiton
Eat my way through Vietnam
Go on an Amazing Race style treasure hunt
Go snorkelling at Raj Ampat
Spend a full and consecutive 12 months in the Arctic
Laze away a summer in Portugal
Sleep over the water in the Maldives
Do the Gibbon Experience in Laos
See the snow monkeys in Northern Japan
Trek to Everest Base Camp
Eat my way through Hong Kong
Go yurt hopping in Mongolia
Trek through the mountains of Pakistan
See the Coliseum
Hike the Arctic Circle Trail
Drive the Ring Road in Iceland
Hike to the Tiger’s Nest Monastery in Bhutan
Explore Sri Lanka by train
Go hot air ballooning
Bungee jump out of a hot air balloon
Get into the hustle and bustle of Seoul
Travel on the Trans Siberian Railway
Visit the Gateway to Hell in Turkmenistan
Photograph the Red Square in Moscow by sunrise
Catch bullet trains through Japan
Experience tourism and communism combined in North Korea
Visit the Lofoten Islands
Spend a summer hiking through Norway
Visit Greenland in winter
See Mt. Fuji
Drink, sail and eat my way through the Greek Islands
Explore the pyramids in Sudan
Visit Bunny Island
Hike the Jatbula Trail
Experience the wildlife in Madagascar
Step foot inside Istanbul’s Blue Mosque
See the sun set from Cable Beach
Feel the rhythm in Cape Verde
Backpack through Iran
Soak in a Japanese onsen
Go island hopping in the Philippines
Come face to face with a leopard seal
Visit Iguazu Falls
Go for a splash in the Devils Pool
Experience the crazy nightlife of Tokyo
Learn to scuba dive
Increase my blood alcohol content in Mendoza
Sleep in an Ice Hotel
Swim with basking sharks in Scotland
Explore the Amazon
Trek the W in Chilean Patagonia
Visit Fingals Cave
Work with MSF
Spend a month in Colombia
Explore the colour of Cape Town
Visit Machu Picchu
Spend 12 months backpacking through Central America
Visit Kruger National Park
Actually go inside a volcano
Move my home base to Edinburgh
Visit Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival
Experience Hogmanay in Edinburgh
Go to Iceland Airwaves
Visit the Isle of Skye
Travel through the Namib Desert
Get spooky on Easter Island
Go on a Man VS Food style trip through the Southern US states
Get fat(ter) in Italy
Do the whole Bolivian salt flats thing
Visit Harry Potter Studios in London
Visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando
Hike Table Mountain
Go hiking through Utah
Cage dive with Great White Sharks
Visit Robben Island
Sleep in an igloo
Explore Banff in Alberta
Spend an autumn in the Pacific Northwest
Explore the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
Experience the colours of Cuba
Walk through the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest
Go to a Disneyworld
Experience the magic of the Pink Mosque in Shiraz
Fly in a private jet (a gal can dream)
Plunge into the Blue Lagoon
Learn another language (preferably Swedish)
See icebergs up close
Camp on a glacier
Go to a full moon party
Experience the polar night
Experience the midnight sun
Party properly in Budapest
Go ice climbing
See a glacial moulin up close
Swim between two continental plates
See a glacier calve
Go caving
Take a ride in a helicopter
Go on a helicopter pub crawl
Thank you for reading my wonderful solo travel lovers!
If you have done anything on this list, or if you have an idea for a travel experience that I should add to this list, please let me know in the comments, and as always, happy solo travelling xx
Thats one hell of a list! Happy travels 😀
This is an awesome list! I’ve never sat down and written a bucket list either. After my first time bungee jumping the instructor said, “Now you can cross it off your bucket list!” and I was like, huh… maybe I should write one of those! But I never did, maybe now is a good time 🙂
Do no this forget Jasper when you explore Banff!
Visit more polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba.
Heck, spend several months in Canada, before or after all your USA travel.
Your list is so huge Ellen! Great photos. ❤️💕🌴🌵
This is such an inspiring blog post and bucket list!
indeed a very and comprehensive list. Wish you will strike them off soon. I envy you as well proud of your accomplishments until now. Hope I get that kick after reading this post:)
That sounds like my dream bucket list. Safe travels!
Great list, now what will you do past 2020. HAHA. Have some fun adventures.
Reblogged this on The Chubby Traveler and commented:
Loved this!!!
Check out the list and feel free to start making your own!
Ooh Ellen, that’s some list…and I thought we had nothing to offer you…nothing. But then I see the Quidditch thing. Is that all we have? Strangely I do know that my University of Bangor (North Wales) now has a student Quidditch team so a lot of it must go on here and there. I shall contact our tourist board to inform them that THAT is all people are interested in now. First Brexit, now this.
But then I see you want to move to Edinburgh so it isn’t all bad for us.
I would like to do the festival too, but imagine it can be very expensive, and leave you with the feeling that you’ve missed out somewhere. Something else I want to do there is go see Nils Olav (now promoted to Brigadier Sir Nils Olav) who’s Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian King’s Guard. He does ceremonial walk arounds so the public can go and say hello. He also lives in Edinburgh Zoo and is a King Penguin.
Really like how you organized this with links to past blog entries. I found some more to read that were fascinating. I loved Skye also. But even in April it was quite cold!! Had a very good bowl of Cullen skink in a hotel restaurant on Skye.
Wow, that’s an extensive list but you can’t Zorb in Queenstown I’m afraid. The only place you can do it in New Zealand is Rotorua which is on the other island.
I’ll be so jealous if you get to Antarctica before me. That is my sole goal in life.
I did the highest bungee jump after uni: what a rush. Uluru was a magical place for me. I highly recommend it when you’re home in Oz. The Galapagos was another magical place for me. I volunteered there and learned more about life there than the average tourist. Eye opening. Taking a selfie with a quokka is actually very difficult. They love to come up to you but you need patience and a self-timer to get a good one. I only succeeded in chopping off half of me or half of it! Iceland’s Ring Road under the midnight sun is beautiful and Edinburgh during the Fringe is chaotic fun. Macchu Picchu is stunning but unfortunately overcrowded these days and taking a train through Sri Lanka’s tea country is beautiful (even though I was ill at the time). I also second the comment above to visit Jasper in Alberta: Banff’s quieter but still beautiful cousin.
Happy travels!
Reblogged this on Arushi Sachan.
That sure is a long list…enough for more than one lifetime perhaps? I suspect a bit of prioritisation might be required…🙂. Do you know if the list will fit inside a bucket?
Great list 🙂 happy to have crossed a few of those off myself and there’s plenty more to add to my list… it just keeps growing!
Which ones have you done?!
I am glad you haven’t saturated your travels yet, which means you will be recording a lot more of these. I can see these places through your posts even if I can’t travel 🙂
Oh I definitely will! You just wait for the amazing trips I have in the works for next year!
This is a great list ! I will also add some of these places in my bucket list
Wow this is an awesome list! Some of them are things that I really want to do as well. I have done just a few from the list: Get messy at Holi Festival because Holi is a local festival in Nepal where I am from hehe, polar bear spotting at spitsbergen: I saw a baby and mama bear from the boat but they were really far away, explore Sri Lanka by train: I have explored some coastal towns in Sri Lanka by train, learn scuba diving: got certified this year and I’ve done island hopping in El Nido, Philippines. But there’s so much more to do and your list is very encouraging!
Oh man I am so jealous of the polar bear sighting!
They looked like two tiny white dots with naked eyes though – just with binoculars we were able to make out shapes.
Good thing you’re young.
Suggest traveling the Karakorum Highway, seeing Samarkand’s Registan at night, riding the Darjeeling Himalaya Railway and visiting the mountains of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. (Have done the first three, alas not the last.)
Central Asia is definitely on my radar! At this stage it looks like I’ll get there in the latter part of 2019!
Wow, inspiring list! I’m so pleased to see a few of my list items on there, hoping you get round to writing about them first, as I have used your blogs as a manual to a lot of my trips, namely Greenland, Iceland, South Africa and Jordan.
I know you’re all about travelling solo, but if you begin hiking the arctic circle trail then hit me up, we can call it a solo travellers colaboration!
Thank you for your inspiration!
Which of those list items have you done?!
35, of your 135?! Highlights being Northern lights, midnight sun, Scuba diving and taking the Trans Siberian through Russia and Mongolia! It seems like you have a fair few from your home country which is cool! When you see it on a list like that it makes you appreciate how incredible travel is, and inspires you to do more! Very intrigued by Norway, hope you get out there soon!
Have fun! 😀
To add to this – Spend an autumn in New England.
Snowmobile in the forests of Wyoming/Idaho/Montana (USA)
Also, explore Leh-Ladakh region in India.
Good tips!
Banff is lovely and is the park that started the national park system but there are also five other parks all around it that are equally stunning and have less tourist traffic. You can’t go wrong in the Rockies that’s for sure.
Good to know, I’ll make sure to make a note of that for when I finally make it to that corner of the world!