Going Off the Itinerary and Finding Lifelong Memories The best travel moments are almost always unplanned. But going off-script often requires risking the most valuable commodity a traveler has: time. We need to give up a sure thing (a major museum, a picturesque waterfall, a buzzed-about bistro) for the unknown (turning down a dirt road, approaching a stranger, stepping through a door). I travel with a more unwieldy to-do list than most, one that I gather from friends, colleagues, readers, Twitter followers, Web research, travel apps, guidebooks, etc. There's invariably more on my agenda than I could possibly hope to accomplish. Yet when someone mentions a place I've been to, even if was months or years earlier, without fail the first image my brain churns up - the cover picture on the photo album in my head - doesn't come from that list. It's something I saw or someplace I went or someone I met after I summoned the courage to abandon my plans. The truth is, I wish I did that more often; I often chicken out. But when I do improvise, something amazing always happens. At least, that's the way it seems. In reality, I'm sure I've turned down a lot of dirt roads that led to nowhere and have been blown off by many strangers. Selective memory, I guess. Luckily, sometimes there's a real photo to match my memories of a risk that paid off. Here is a selection. Share your off-the-itinerary stories in the comments section below. 1) I was driving a low-end rental car along the mountain roads that skirt the Adriatic, eager to reach the next beach town on the "Albanian Riviera." But a sign that seemed to point to a monastery down a turnoff caught my eye. I went past it, thought again and, after a U-turn, headed down a rocky road. It soon became too treacherous for my subcompact, so I started walking. Around a curve, the sea came into view far below, and soon I realized the road (by this point more of a path) was descending not toward a monastery but a semicircle of white sand at the mouth of a canyon. It was a perfect beach - and, apparently, all for me. As it turned out, an Austrian couple had also found it, but I didn't notice them until I had stripped naked and dived into the water. 2) At the end of a 41-mile hike along the coast of the far-off Brazilian state of Piauí, I learned that the only way back to Parnaíba (the regional center), was to take a moto-taxi to a highway gas station that serves as an informal ride-sharing center to the city. Astonishingly, this turned out to be true, and within minutes I was on the road with a kind man named Mário and his yipping Chihuahua, Teca. When Mário invited me to his extended family's modest Parnaíba home, I hesitated - I had things to see in the city, of course - but was glad I went. I ended up sharing in a leisurely lunch of a traditional duck dish and met the family's litter of 2-day-old kittens. But mostly I spent the afternoon teaching Mário's adorable 7-year-old niece, Bianca, how to use my fancy camera. She also allowed me to take this portrait. 3) On a Sunday morning the day before I left Auckland, New Zealand, I took a long bus ride to the far-off Manurewa neighborhood, where immigrants from Pacific island nations like Tonga and Samoa hold a market. Then I set off wandering and came across a church that would hold a Samoan-language service that afternoon. Should I hole up and wait in a nearby burger joint for a few hours, or should I get back to my Auckland agenda? Though I felt I was getting in over my head in a culture I knew nothing about, I summoned up the courage to interrupt the minister's meeting to ask if I could attend. I'll never forget the congregation's sea of white dresses and formal hats and the beautiful sound of the Samoan language, especially mesmerizing when they sang a translated version of "This Little Light of Mine." 4) I was riding my bike around Bornholm, a bucolic Danish island that in June is a common destination for end-of-year middle school field trips. Early one evening, in a recently harvested field way off the main road, I spotted a group of kids playing ... baseball? There were plenty of reasons not to stop and find out more: it was getting dark, it was rude to interrupt their game - and most of all, I was a 42-year-old stranger approaching a group of schoolkids. But I went anyway, and to my relief the teacher welcomed me. She explained the game - called rundbold - and even subbed me in for an at-bat. 5) What's the protocol for seeking permission to take a photograph of an elderly Muslim woman sitting picturesquely in the doorway of her modest home in the heavily Sunni Lebanese city of Tripoli? My first instinct was: don't. But I'm glad I drummed up the courage. I jokingly lifted my camera in an exaggerated fashion - invented sign language for "I'd like to take your picture, but I'm not really going to," and she smiled, waved me over and invited me in. She even invited me back the next day for lunch.