Leaky bucket

Many people have a “bucket list” of places they want to visit and things they want to do before they die---or “kick the bucket.” I too have created and maintained such a list, if not on paper, in my mind. However, as I age, and times change, my bucket list has sprung a leak. Items that used to be in the bucket aren’t there any longer. Moreover, I question what remains, and indeed the very reason to have such a list.

The first items to leak out are activities that I am not sure I have the strength or stamina to undertake. I was thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro once upon a time. It is a dream of many folks interested in mountains, and my daughter did it many years ago. However, I have taken it off the list, as I am not just strong enough anymore. Same is the case with my ambition to climb Mount Rainier. One of the guys I used to do winter hikes with climbed it when he was 60 and found it challenging. I am way beyond that age.

Another group no longer in my bucket list is of places that have become out of bounds due to political unrest. That group includes Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, North Korea and Venezuela. I am also a bit unsure of Turkey and Iran. Both are generally considered safe, but I would rather wait before taking risk.

However, a much larger number of items that have leaked out of the bucket are places and activities I no longer find worthwhile. There are many reasons for that, but basically I believe that the cost benefit analysis has turned against undertaking such trips or activities.

The “cost” does have a monetary component, but it is more a function of hassle involved. The idea of sitting many hours in an airplane (I do suffer from fear of flying) turns me off from many endeavors. There is also some risk involved, especially in travelling to places that are targeted by terrorists. However, I don’t worry too much about that, given the low odds of getting in harms way. On the other hand, I do include the challenges posed by ever increasing hoards of tourists in the cost side of my equation.

Even more than the increased cost, it is the reduced benefit that bothers me. I have now been to so many places and experienced so many activities that it would take something extraordinary to make me say “wow.”  A prime example is visiting a city---a European one, for example. In the old days, I would have found the idea of going to a large European city exciting, but that has now long gone. I just don’t care for the cathedrals, museums, cute cafes, or big palaces as I used to. They all have started looking the same.

That is also true for landscapes. Some of them I still find interesting (as was the case with our recent visit to Iceland), but a run-of-a-mill glacier is not as exciting as it used to be before my visits to Patagonia, Alaska, Iceland, Antarctica and the Arctic. Along those lines, we are no longer that interested in going to New Zealand, even though it has become a hot destination. How would those mountains be different from the ones we have already seen, say, in Patagonia?

Another benefit that has gone away, and I admit, is the bragging rights that come with visiting a new place. Now with everyone going everywhere, no one can brag anymore.

The final reason for the benefit of a visit going down is the tremendous increase in tourism, now that China has joined this in a big way. Nothing spoils an experience more than being surrounded by buses disgorging tourists who quickly take selfies and then embark again for the next destination. Iceland has become like that, so have Banff and Jasper. Yosemite is a gone case.

Last year, I could not believe what a madhouse the beautiful city of Prague has become from the first time I visited in 1991. Today, one cannot even walk at a normal pace on the famous Charles Bridge. So packed it has become. Given that, I cannot even think of going back to Venice or Florence. Even the distant Svalbard is on the brink of becoming a routine stop of mammoth cruise ships.

The final point I want to make is whether it is even worthwhile having a bucket list. So what if you don’t visit a “must see” place or partake in a “once in a lifetime” adventure?

Along this line, in an earlier Blog Post (September 2016) --- titled “Old age and Epicurus”--- I mentioned what the author, Daniel Klein thinks of bucket lists. Here I repeat:

Klein coins a term “forever young” to describe elderly who are trying to remain young forever, by making bucket lists and trying to run around with as much vigor as when they were young. According to him, “Many forever youngsters are driven by the frustration of not having fully achieved the goals they dreamed of attaining when they were younger; they see their final years as a last chance to grab some elusive brass ring.”

He elaborates on his disdain for a bucket list, “New experiences and new things couldn’t possibly be boring, could they? Well apparently they often could. Newness itself gets old. At the twelfth place to see before dying, viewing exotic terrain gets to be old hat---you’ve already done exotic eleven times.”

Talking about “exotic”, I have often fancied going to the “Silk Route”. However, after seeing the photographs of a couple of friends who have been there, I am not too sure. They all have Stalinist buildings, smiley tour guides---appropriately dressed---and a few monuments of the past. Same is the case with a safari in Kenya and Tanzania. OK, it will be fun seeing the wildlife, but how different it would be from thousands of pictures we have already seen, and how “wild” it would really be with a large number of Land Rovers containing tourists with fancy cameras surrounding a poor isolated beast?

Perhaps I am in a cynical funk.

When I get out of it, I will go back to my shrunken bucket list and preserve what remains from leaking out. We may still go to Central Asia and even undertake a safari. Iran and Turkey will remain high on our list. Oh yes, we still haven’t been to a big chunk of Asia. That needs to be fixed. We are still “young” and need to do something with the remaining days of our lives. ;-)