Framed in our kitchen is a world map, designed with black vinyl peel-off stickers on a modern white background. When I return home from a new trip, I peel off the countries I visited, and celebrate another adventure.
I bought the map in Scandinavia with my husband, Brian, and our four daughters, on a trip to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary in 2019.
Between 2020 and 2024, our family spent Christmas Eve chasing the Northern Lights in Yukon, scuba diving off remote Caribbean islands where airport security meant unzipping your suitcase by hand, spending spring break in Cuba, and skiing above the Arctic Circle in Finland with frozen eyelashes.
Yet still, the 25 white countries reveled were all clustered in Europe and North America.
“There’s a whole part of the world over here to visit,” said the woman at the frame shop, pointing to Asia as she placed the map under the crisp white mat she suggested for the black frame.
“Yes, I know. I’m trying to get there,” I replied.
When Family Travel Turned Solo
In 2024, I sat by my map with a glass of wine and applied for six visas for us to spend a month in Indonesia. The plan was to stop in Sydney, Australia, scuba dive in Komodo National Park, and tour temples in Bali.
When I arrived to pick up my college daughter for summer break, nothing in her dorm room was packed. She was unwell. Back home, I did what I knew was right, and I canceled our trip.
Removing stickers from Asia was going to have to wait.
Needing to regroup from a summer that was not going as planned, I found a last-minute spot at a yoga retreat at the Feathered Pipe Ranch, nestled at the base of the Rocky Mountains of Montana. It was the longest I had ever left my family for a solo adventure.
Every evening at dusk, I walked down the swimming hole framed by mountains, and I swam until my skin was numb from the cold mountain water. In the afternoons, I sat by a stupa with hundreds of Tibetan prayer flags blowing in the wind. In a place that felt like summer camp for adults, a new sense of freedom opened within me.
A 48-year-old stay-at-home mom with two teens and an 8-year-old at home, I was far from being an empty nester and too invested for a career change. I craved wanderlust like when Brian and I were a young couple in France, hopping trains in Paris and waking up in Budapest without a plan.
Bali was supposed to be a soft introduction to Asia for my family, but I really wanted to go to India.
When I got home, I heard positive reports of life without me. Everyone was as chill as the moose I saw in the swimming hole.
So, I announced to my family that I was going to India for a month. By myself.
Learning to Fly Solo And Going Far
Two days after Christmas in 2024, I got on a plane heading to Pune, India. I rang in the New Year on a rooftop watching fireworks all alone, but not lonely. I confidently navigated one of the most challenging countries to travel to solo as a woman. And I loved it.
On quiet night on Hare Krishna Mandir Road, after the rickshaws quit beeping and before the swooshing of women cleaning the streets with straw brooms began, I lay on a hard twin-size mattress with scratchy sheets and vowed to travel to more places like this, that truly awaken my soul.
What unfolded after that was a quest to visit 25 new countries all over the map within the next two years. So, after I turned 50 years old, I could say I’ve been to 50 countries in 50 years.
I began roaming the world in ways I never imagined, because my family loves me enough to set me free, watch me come back, and help me peel stickers off the map from far-away places I visited with and without them. After India came the United Arab Emirates, the Maldives, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, and Japan. For all the countries I visited, including with my family, are posted on Instagram.
Indonesia was country number 49. When I went to the Indonesian Ministry of Immigration website to apply for my visa, it still had our six e-visa applications saved in draft form, from a trip that never happened in 2024. It was weird to apply for just one visa this time. But I did.
For 10 days in Komodo National Park, I woke up to the orange volcanic mountains lit up by the rising sun and surrounded by the ocean. On the last morning, I got an up-close look at the thatched-roof beach bungalows on shore, where we had planned to stay in the summer of 2024.
It was a long, strange trip to get there. But I made it.
50 Countries, at 50 Years Old. I Did It!
On the return flights home from Indonesia, I had an 11-hour layover in Tokyo. Like a girl waking up in Budapest without a plan, this girl woke up in Tokyo without a plan.
Because I am a lucky woman who sleeps well on planes, sandwiched between red-eyes, with a traveling scuba buddy raring to see the city, we found ourselves a full day of site-seeing, fortune telling, Buddhist blessings, local vegan food, public transportation, and a parade!
This officially makes Japan country number 50!
I waffled on counting it or not. But in thinking about how it all unfolded, this is exactly why I love to travel. For the times that life surprises with new plans that are better than the original plan.
At 50 years old, I am proud to say I am wild enough to scuba dive in Indonesia with manta rays in notoriously strong currents, skilled enough to navigate the Tokyo subway on a 10-hour layover, and grateful enough to embrace a 17-hour flight in an economy seat with a smile.
I feel like a world traveler. I am a world traveler.
