Bucket List Bounty

Soul-stirring, mind-altering travel is all about the journey, they say, and seldom focussed around the destination, but here is the Spice order of the travel universe that may just knock that theory out of water.

- SONIA NAZARETH

Are you the kind of traveller who wants to come away from a journey with more than just an endlessly relaxed time and a belly full of succulent food? There are plenty of places on our remarkable planet to do just that. Here are five such places—whether as vast as a continent or as confined as a national park, each of them illustrate how travelling in the opposite direction of the herd, can frequently throw up satisfying reward.

Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica

Vast, white, and surreal are adjectives frequently bandied about when describing this pristine continent. Rivalling the drama of a scape of ice, water, and rock, are enormous quantities of extraordinary wildlife. Booking a cabin on an expedition cruiser (with usually no more than 200 passengers, so you can make more shore landings as no more than 100 people are permitted to be on shore at any one time) is the best way to increase your chances to get up close to the islands of the Antarctic Peninsula.