Euphonious Bucket List

Bucket lists are all over the place these days. Last year, I wrote a bucket list on this blog, but I never looked at it again. (Oops, adding the hyperlink I realized it was two years ago.) As much as I love to make lists, the bucket list just doesn’t resonate with me. Except for one bucket list that I carry around in my heart. Here’s how it started.

One morning, when I still worked in an office, I was participating in the morning ritual of walking across the street to get coffee with my coworkers. We were talking about vacation plans, and all the places might go. Remote islands were mentioned, and I had to confess that I would rather go to Vanuatu than Fiji.

Why Vanuatu? was the obvious response. I explained. I stumbled on Vanuatu in the early days of the internet, and couldn’t actually remember many details about what I had read, but the name stuck with me. It was so exotic and mysterious, like a place made up for a fantasy novel. I’ve heard it again in recent years, as the tiny island nation has become a poster child for global warming. But even more than “see it before it sinks,” the mouthfeel of that glorious name makes me dream of someday standing on the sands of Vanuatu.

The name you see, is the necessary thing…

-The Dread Pirate Roberts

There are several places like that, places I know almost nothing about but whose names inspire wonder and spark dreams. I know that if I ever go to any of them, I will have to eventually find actual facts about them. But until then I am happy to keep their names on a shelf, coated with a dust of magic and mystery.

The man behind us in line at the coffee shop jumped in to the conversation. “It’s your Euphonious Bucket List,” he said. And I guess that’s what it is.

Vanuatu

Zanzibar

Kashgar

Timbuktu

The Taklamakan Desert

Trondheim

Kathmandu

What places are pleasing to your ears?