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. ;-)
