My Top 10 Travel Destinations
People often ask me for my bucket list.
The truth is, I don’t really travel to collect countries anymore. I travel to collect questions.
Every city has given me one.
Some have asked who I wanted to become.
Others quietly asked who I had been all along.
Looking back, the places that changed me the most weren’t necessarily the most beautiful. They were the ones that interrupted the story I was telling myself. They made me slower. Hungrier. More observant. Less certain.
If I had to choose ten destinations, these would be mine.
1. San Francisco, USA
Because no city has taught me more about ambition.
San Francisco smells of roasted coffee, eucalyptus after rain, salt carried inland by the Pacific, and impossible optimism. It is where startups become religions and productivity masquerades as personality.
I spent years there believing I was building a career.
In hindsight, I was also building an identity.
The city gave me friendships, opportunities, heartbreak, layoffs, immigration paperwork, impossible hills, dogs who believed every beach belonged to them, and sunsets that forgave almost everything.
It also taught me that Silicon Valley’s greatest export isn’t technology.
It’s hope.
2. Mumbai, India
Because nowhere celebrates chaos quite as beautifully.
Mumbai doesn’t ask for your attention.
It kidnaps it.
The city smells simultaneously of monsoon rain, frying vada pav, jasmine flowers, diesel, incense, fresh fish, sea salt and cardamom chai.
It is impossible to experience quietly.
Here, weddings become theatrical productions with enough food to feed entire neighborhoods. Local trains become sociology classrooms. Vegetable markets become negotiations worthy of diplomatic summits.
Mumbai reminded me that life was never meant to be optimized.
Only experienced.
3. Copenhagen, Denmark
Because simplicity is harder than complexity.
There is a stillness to Copenhagen that almost feels engineered.
Bicycles glide silently.
People trust one another.
Bread deserves its own religion.
Candles appear even when electricity works perfectly.
The city quietly dismantled my belief that success must always be loud.
Sometimes sophistication whispers.
4. London, England
Because history has exceptional storytelling skills.
London doesn’t feel like one city.
It feels like centuries having an ongoing conversation.
Every street carries an argument between empire and modernity.
Every pub contains at least three novels.
Every rainy afternoon somehow improves the architecture.
It taught me that civilizations, like people, are beautifully inconsistent.
5. Goa, India
Because joy requires less planning than we imagine.
Goa has an unusual relationship with time.
Lunch becomes dinner.
One conversation becomes an afternoon.
The sea edits priorities with remarkable efficiency.
The older I become, the more I appreciate places that encourage lingering over arriving.
6. Lonavala
Because some journeys are measured in conversations rather than kilometers.
The drive out of Mumbai has become almost ceremonial.
Fog rolling over the hills.
Roadside chai.
Corn roasted over charcoal.
Unexpected waterfalls appearing after generous monsoons.
Sometimes you travel hundreds of miles to escape.
Sometimes eighty kilometers is enough.
7. Pune
Because cities, like people, can mature gracefully.
Pune possesses an intellectual rhythm that has always appealed to me.
Bookshops.
Old cafés.
Students convinced they’ll change the world.
Retirees convinced the world was better before everyone else tried.
They’re probably both right.
8. New York City, USA
Because nowhere performs confidence quite like Manhattan.
New York moves with astonishing certainty.
Everyone appears late for something important.
The city celebrates ambition without apology.
Yet beneath its velocity are tiny moments of astonishing humanity—a jazz musician in the subway, strangers recommending bagel shops with religious conviction, Central Park reminding millions that nature occasionally wins.
9. The Airports Between Places
An unusual choice.
But airports have become some of the most defining places in my life.
They’re where identities change.
Visas expire.
Suitcases disappear.
Goodbyes become routine.
Airports are the geography of transition.
No one dreams of them.
Everyone remembers them.
10. Home
Whichever version of it exists today.
Home stopped being a location somewhere between immigration queues, corporate layoffs, return flights, family dinners, wedding seasons, and walking Sauli through unfamiliar neighborhoods.
I’ve discovered that belonging has very little to do with geography.
Sometimes it sounds like your parents arguing over tea.
Sometimes it’s the smell of biryani drifting through an apartment window.
Sometimes it’s watching fog roll over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Sometimes it’s simply knowing which grocery store sells the good mangoes.
Perhaps that’s why I struggle with lists like these.
The best destinations don’t give us photographs.
They quietly rearrange us.
Many of these places appear throughout About Life Choices & Potholes, not as tourist destinations, but as characters. They host careers and heartbreaks, immigration interviews and Indian weddings, lost luggage and found friendships, extraordinary meals and ordinary Tuesdays. Looking back, I don’t think I was travelling to discover the world.
I was travelling to discover that life, much like a good city, is best explored on foot—with curiosity, a healthy appetite, and enough humility to accept that the scenic route is usually the memorable one.
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