Travel has become a lifelong destination — there are always more journeys to be had, more places to encounter. I mostly travel alone, but I am rarely lonely. I pass the moments in between the doing, seeing, and exploring by summoning a wealth of emotions that have pumped through my veins and out through my pencils (yes, I still hand write before I ever type). I’ve collected a series of Moleskine notebooks, tattooed with stickers from my explorations and filled with records of places I've visited and my feelings about things.

Cross-country voyages become writing retreats. I move my hand across the page as a way to soothe my mind. Plus, I love glue sticks. Bus passes, temple tickets, beer labels — they’ve all made it into my notebooks. They’ve given me bite-sized ways to devour (again) the places and people I've encountered.

My experiences have inexorably changed me; I can summon the sweet, doughy aroma of trdelník, a cylindrical, sugar-dusted cake that tastes best paired with Prague’s icy winter air. Or the time Kaleo, a Maui-born navigator, placed an octopus on my stomach after it had freshly released its ink, only to have me pry it off. Flexing my core, I will forever be able to recall, suction cup by suction cup, tentacle by tentacle, how it felt leaving my skin.

But it's taking those moments and transforming them into travel writing, pieces that can inform, inspire, assist, and perhaps even educate a little, that matters.

Throughout this collection of places to travel in 2016, I have attempted to merge instinct and logic with knowledge. I adore asking questions — it is quite literally my profession. Some of the recommendations that I make came about through happenstance; I was simply in the right place at the right time. Others came about through aimless wandering. Every town in every country has something magical — the food, the people, something human hands built, or something Mother Nature created. Sometimes it’s in the mountains; other times it’s under water.

I’ve also been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Deep in the Transkei, South Africa, I saw the fragility of life when a duo of dogs collided with cars on a highway, with deadly results. In the early hours of a sweaty spring morning in Rio De Janeiro, I found myself without lodging and checked into a "love motel," partly because breakfast was free and partly because this particular type of accommodation often offers clean, impeccable rooms. Dueling down the hallway with my surfboards, I stumbled, literally, into an underage flaxen-haired boy shooting up in the hallway, post coitus. The dark circles under his eyes matched his desperation: his eyes met mine and he fled. Collapsing onto the starched white sheets of my violet-colored room, I began uncontrollably sobbing.

The places I’ve included have changed me in one way or another; I spiritually grew at Ghost Ranch, I fulfilled a lifelong dream to fly fish in Colorado, I survived a serious surfing wipeout in Fiji that’s left me with reef scars shaped like a bear's claw. I’ve eaten the soft-boiled egg at Le Candille in Mougins and it redefined what an egg could be for me. And I fell deeply and quickly in love with a Turkish man in Japan, only to find us gravitating to opposite ends of the world a year-and-a-half later.

Some of the places I’ve been fortunate to stay define the word luxury; the ones I have included are worth the cost, even if for one night. Many have cost next to nothing. I’ve couchsurfed. I’ve camped. I’ve slept in my surfboard bag in more airports than I care to recount. I purposefully travel in low season, when tourists are scarce and prices are low. I’ve committed to adventuring outside of what and where I’m comfortable.

Everyone deserves to travel. What you see and how it makes you feel matters. These destinations, and the suggestions contained within them, are meant as stepping stones for your own adventures from someone who wants to say that travel is most often a revelation. The world is ready for you. No, eager for you.