Discover Intangible Riches on Inspiring Milestone Trips the World Over

It’s a truth universally acknowledged: Not every trip is created equal. Some are for family or social obligations, where the tropical island remains largely unexplored in lieu of birthday lunches, rehearsal dinners or your cousin’s graduation ceremony. Others are strictly business, where the nearby ski resort seems as hypothetical as your Q4 plans on the whiteboard in the corporate boardroom. Of course, the best trips are strictly for pleasure — the long-awaited vacation you’ve plotted (and saved airline miles) for months on end.

Then there are the milestones, when the trip itself transcends into something more: a transformative experience, a brush with the sublime. In my career, I’ve explored more than a hundred countries and learned to expect the unexpected — my most memorable getaways have been equally enchanting and surprising. Ultimately, these life-changing journeys aren’t about luxury or the trappings of a 5-star retreat — though that never hurts — but rather the intangible riches you bring home upon return.

I’ve sorted such trips into three categories — culture, adventure and spirituality — all of which offer methods for getting in touch with yourself by venturing further into the unknown. Wherever you go, there you are. Each adventure reflected a part of my life back to me, whether ancestral, personal or universal — tracing family roots in Transylvania, meditating in Tibetan monasteries and trekking the untamed wilds of Tanzania, where humanity began. From the misty heights of the Meili Snow Mountains to the endless grasslands of the southern Serengeti, here are three milestone trips sure to take your breath away.

CULTURE: ROMANIA
Romania, a land of myth and folklore, evokes vampires and mysticism, the nocturnal and otherworldly. It’s also a country I’ve been desperate to visit my entire life. I’m half Transylvanian, and l foolishly missed a family pilgrimage the summer after high school. But maybe timing is everything, and you visit certain places when you’re destined to appreciate them the most. I visited Romania on the occasion of the Herbarium Festival at Therme București, the largest spa in Europe, enticing enough to lure day-trippers from Italy for an afternoon of soaking poolside. The festival drew healers from all over the world for a 13-day spectacle of wellness, European-style (cocktails were served at the swim-up bar).

PHOTO: © THERME GROUP

Calling a country a hidden gem is wildly overused in my profession, but in this instance it’s simply the truth. Romania proved nothing short of a revelation — as I’m certain it would be for most travelers, regardless of the familial connection. Bucharest, known as Little Paris for its Beaux-Arts and Neoclassical architecture lining the cobblestone streets (there’s even an Arcul de Triumf ), and the Carpathian Mountains and rolling countryside prove as charming and bucolic as anywhere in the Austrian Alps. But defining Romania by the landscapes of Western Europe does this charmingly quirky and unique country a disservice, and nowhere was this storied heritage more on display than at Bran Castle.

I am descended from Dracula on my father’s side; my bloodline traces to Jusztina Szilágyi, second wife of the fearsome Vlad Tepes. (He was a victim of bad PR; had he not protected his homeland, it would have certainly succumbed to the Ottoman Empire).

“Dracula is the reason we don’t speak Turkish here,” said my driver and guide, Robert Ivanescu.

My understanding of Romania and Romanians heretofore had been based on a curious combination of cultural lore (castles, witchcraft) and lived experience. We eat stuffed cabbage at holidays (called sarmale) and drink țuică with every meal (plum brandy that’s sneakily intoxicating). I can sing and pray in Romanian; but as is the case with many families generationally removed from the motherland, we no longer speak the native tongue. Yet I was utterly embraced by the Romanians I met — greeted as a returning daughter — and felt closer to my heritage than ever before.

“Eventually, everyone steps on the land where they belong” was a familiar if poetic refrain. “This place is your home; it may not be Ibiza. But it’s your place,” Ivanescu told me on the final day of my trip.

Forget Ibiza; if I want pool parties and cocktails, I’ll head back to Therme.

SPIRITUALITY: YUNNAN, CHINA
For travelers seeking nirvana, Tibet has always loomed large, its towering mountains equal to its stature as a supremely sacred homeland for Buddhism (specifically Vajrayana). Discover no better way to immerse yourself in Tibetan culture than via a road trip across the Plateau with Songtsam Resorts. The collection of boutique hotels features elegant retreats in the remote Himalayan regions of China (Yunnan and Sichuan provinces) and the Tibetan Autonomous Region, serving as a living museum imparting Tibetan wisdom and traditions.

“Our core mission at Songtsam is to pursue the essence of happiness,” explained Tibetan documentary filmmaker Baima Duoji, the brand’s founder.

Arriving at my elegant stone suite in Shangri-La on the first day, I truly did feel I’d arrived at the gates of paradise. On my first monastery visit the next morning, though, I was reminded mindfulness comes from within: “If you’re thinking about what you’ll have for dinner, it won’t work,” said my Tibetan guide, Kirin Sonam Tsering. “When you’re observing these Buddhist statues and symbols, you have to be present within your mind — in your body, in your heart.”

I found my weeklong retreat in the Tibetan Plateau provided plenty of opportunities for reflection, not only at the temples and monasteries (where the ultimate luxury is silence) but also through the wild beauty of my surroundings: the rolling hills, emerald rivers and dramatic mountain peaks.

PHOTO: © SONGTSAM

This vertiginous landscape plays a crucial role in the Tibetan belief in life’s transience and serene outlook on mortality: “When you see these massive mountains, you realize how small human beings are,” said Duoji. “It’s like being an astronaut going to space and looking back at Earth: You realize how small we are.”

And this perspective is one few in the world get a chance to see. But, luckily, Songtsam handles all the logistics for you, providing a weeklong guide and assisting with paperwork, demystifying a region steeped in lore and shrouded in mystery. I experienced this firsthand on my journey from Shangri-La to Songtsam enclaves in the rural regions of Cizhong and Tacheng before concluding my trip in Kunming, known as the City of Eternal Spring, where flowers perennially bloom. I felt a similar rebirth over the course of my trip: I stopped thinking about deadlines and went completely off the grid. (Limited WiFi and restricted Gmail access will do that for you.) I returned home more appreciative of the vastness of the world, of the deliciousness of cross-bridge rice noodles … and one step closer to that ever-elusive enlightened state.

ADVENTURE: TANZANIA
You’d think a milestone trip wouldn’t necessarily entail revisiting a country you’d visited merely five months earlier; but when you experience a landscape with a new lens, it reveals more of its secrets. At least that’s what I learned this winter when I traveled the Northern Circuit of Tanzania with Entara. I started my journey in Arusha, at Koroi Forest Camp, before heading to Tarangire, where I witnessed more elephants than I’d ever seen in my life … and I am a safari fanatic. I finished my trip in Esirai, a mobile tented camp in the Serengeti, where I learned the Great Migration is a myth (animals constantly move across the plains), as is the idea that safari needs to be prohibitively expensive to be enjoyable.

PHOTO: © KATHERINE PARKER-MAGYAR

Experiencing a safari without all the extraneous trappings — do you really need a five-course meal in the bush? — brought to mind what the purpose of such an adventure is: the wisdom of the local guides, the majesty of the stalking lions and the dazzles of zebras, the sheer endlessness of the plains. Fly-camping in Olkeri, we drank gin and tonics beneath a sycamore fig, watching the fiery African sunset darken to a velvet sky of twinkling stars.

“This, to me, is the magic of safari because it’s what we did as kids,” said our guide, Ethan Kinsey. “Sitting around the fire; no one is setting up our tents or fussing.”

PHOTO: © KATHERINE PARKER-MAGYAR

And while we weren’t all blessed with African childhoods (growing up as literal bush babies), there is something universal about the entire experience nonetheless. Perhaps because, ultimately, we’re all from this land — Tanzania is called the Cradle of Mankind. Humanity evolved here, and perhaps unsurprisingly it’s also where we feel most alive. I left my trip feeling as wild and untamed as the dense forests and endless plains of the grasslands. And that sense of freedom — that hope and possibility — is, ultimately, what travel is all about.