Now that I’m no longer fresh into my 30s, I’m reflecting a lot on how my travel has changed since I was younger and full of energy (hah). These are some travel bucket list items I think every traveler should try before they hit the big 3-0. Hopefully this list gets you inspired to try something new and start exploring!
Now, just because I’m recommending these for the under 30s does not mean they should exclusively be for them! If you’re over 30 and want to do any of these things, go for it! I’m still doing many of these travel items in my 30s — which is the point! Some of these bucket list items are actually limited to under-30s, but most are just more aligned with a younger travel style or will help you focus your travel priorities on what you truly enjoy.
1. Dorms, Dorms, Dorms
If you’re on the internet travel-sphere, you’ve heard all sorts of stories about hostel dorms. Don’t let them put you off! The dorm experience is formative for many young travelers and can lead to some of the best stories and travel highlights. Hostel dorms are an easy way to meet other like-minded travelers, find new friends, and discover new must-see destinations. Without having to leave your bed!
Many 30+ travelers still enjoy the affordability and sociability that hostels provide. But there’s something special about being in your twenties and learning to live with so many different people.
2. Party Hostel
As you travel more, you find that not all hostels are created equal. The stereotypical ‘party hostel’ combines living and partying in a way many college graduates may find nostalgic and familiar. There are often hostel guest discounts, bar-wide events (karaoke, trivia, etc), and easy access to your bed at the end of the night. Not all party hostels label themselves as such — read guest reviews to confirm!
3. Pub Crawl
Similar but distinct, the local pub crawl lets travelers meet new people, try a (sometimes ridiculous) amount of alcohol, and gets you exploring the city while providing a measure of safety. Many hostels offer discounts or deals with partnered pub crawls so it’s easy to find some friends at your hostel to join together. The guides are often local and know the area well so you can ask questions and learn a bit more about how the locals live. This travel bucket list item also comes with a bonus experience: hungover travel days.
4. Cook in a Hostel Kitchen
Truly one of the most humbling experiences. Like working in customer service, I recommend everyone cook in a shared kitchen to learn about cooperation and mutual respect. How can you leave a clogged sink full of dirty dishes after you’ve been the one to clean up after others in order to cook your ramen? Who’s going to pilfer other people’s belongings after you’ve had your hard-won pasta bake stolen from the communal fridge?
5. Overnight Transportation
This travel bucket list item is where being young and able to bounce back faster comes in handy. Overnight transportation via bus, train, or ferry can be a very enticing option for many travelers – they often save money and mean one less night of accommodation to book. However, they can be very taxing on the body, especially if you’ve booked truly the cheapest option there is. Having these experiences when you’re younger and able to come back from a sleepless night will let you take advantage of the budget travel while informing your less accommodating older body which compromises you can take and which ones are best left to memory.
6. Road Trip
There’s nothing quite so freeing as packing up a car and seeing where the road takes you. Being able to get to hard to reach places or take spontaneous side quests when a road sign sounds interesting elevates this travel experience into one of my favorites. Driving forces you to be present in your traveling in a way other forms of travel don’t which puts this firmly on my travel bucket list.
7. Take to the Seas
Give the land a break and explore the world by water. Whether on a cruise, a sailing trip like MedSailors, or something else, give yourself a new perspective on travel. For most of human existence, ships were the only way to cross waterways and connect with their nautical neighbors. Live that history while appreciating how far travel has come since then.
8. Working Holiday Visa
This is one of the few items on this travel bucket list that does in fact have an age restriction! For US citizens, the oldest you can be to apply for our qualifying Working Holiday Visas is 30. Australia and New Zealand offer Working Holiday Visas to Americans between the age of 18-30 (inclusive). Ireland offers a working holiday visa for current students or recent graduates within 12 months. Singapore’s Working Holiday Programme is open to Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 for a 6 month duration.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! There’s more opportunities for long-term travel out there than many Americans realize. But unfortunately, many are for those under 30 years old.
9. WOOFing
The phrase WOOFing comes from the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) which popularized this kind of travel and exchange. In essence, this is an exchange between travelers doing labor and (typically) farms providing accommodation and food. There’s no one central database of WWOOF opportunities, but WWOOF International and WorkAway are great places to start.
WOOFing takes travelers out of the big cities and into more local, rural life. This is a great way to meet new people from all walks of life and experience a way of life that’s different (yet surprisingly similar) to the one you know.
10. Study Abroad
Showing my professional background here, but I couldn’t make a travel bucket list without study abroad! In addition to the traditional semester abroad during high school or university, study abroad refers to any travel that has an academic or learning focus. There are many gap year programs that fit here too! What sets study abroad apart from the other travel bucket list items is the one-to-one comparison between perspectives through academic study. You can see how other countries structure academics, learn outside perspectives on issues within your expertise, and discover new educational avenues altogether.
Learning should be lifelong and studying abroad while you’re young will set you on the path of learning in new ways and being open to nuance and change.
11. Overnight Camping
Camping as an adult where you’re the one setting up the tent, making the fire, and feeding yourself is vastly different from camping as a kid. Overnight camping forces you to rely on yourself and get creative with problem solving. It also (cliche incoming) deeply connects you with nature. Telling stories under the stars, waking up with the sun, and listening to the sounds of nature ground you in profound ways.
12. Overnight Festival
Take camping, but amplify the community building by 10 and you have overnight festivals. This is a chance to meet a lot of people who share a specific interest with you and are gathered together to have a happy, safe time. Just by the act of being there, you become part of this shared community. These festivals are often great reminders that all else aside, humans fundamentally want to help and support each other. And that being a fan of something, no matter how ‘un-adult’ the corporate world may view it, is something to celebrate instead of hide away.
13. Thru-Hiking
This one is new to my travel bucket list after visiting New Zealand. Similar to camping, thru-hiking connects you with nature and builds self-reliance and community at the same time. Thru-hiking by definition is completing a long-distance trail, end-to-end consecutively – typically over the course of several days (or weeks or months). You carry all your gear and food on your back and take to the trail.
New Zealand has so many thru-hiking options, from easy one- or two-night trails all the way to the several months long endeavor of the Te Aroroa Trail through the entire country. There are plenty of other hikes around the world like Scotland’s West Highland Way, and the Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian Trail in the US.
14. Pilgrimage
Unlike thru-hiking, pilgrimages have accommodation options along the way so you don’t have to bring camping gear with you. These trails have historical significance as a true pilgrimage and incorporate more local involvement. In many cases, locals along the trails offer food, beds, and hospitality to pilgrims for a truly unique experience.
Some major pilgrimage walks are: Camino de Santiago which has multiple routes through Portugal, Spain, and France; Kumano Kodo in Japan; and St Olav Waterway in Sweden and Finland.
15. Backpacking/Carry-On Only
I’ve seen a lot of checked bag vs. carry-on and suitcase vs. backpack discourse in the travel community and here’s my (piping hot) take: they each have their place. The new-traveler default is always to over pack (with the exception of my brother, who took one practically empty backpack on a 6 week European trip. He’s the packer I aspire to be). I encourage all travelers to give the backpacking or carry-on only travel style at least one try. Maybe you’ll discover it’s not for you. But either way, the lessons you learn about what’s a necessity for you will help you beyond your future travels.
16. Travel with Your Friends
This may seem obvious (why wouldn’t you travel with your friends?!), but I’ll share with you a less obvious reason why this is important. Not all of your friends are good travel friends! And no, this doesn’t mean they’re awful people or don’t know how to travel. We all have different travel styles and priorities. By traveling with your friends, you’ll learn more about how you prefer to travel by what worked well and what didn’t during your trip. Then it becomes easier to plan travels that you know you’ll enjoy – with people you know will enjoy it too. Sometimes friends are meant to travel together forever — and sometimes they’re meant to support each other’s travels…from afar.
17. Family Trips – Parents, Siblings, Cousins
This is the only time I’ll mention aging as a negative thing so brace yourself, we’ll get through this together. As we age, so do the ones that we love. Sharing the experience of travel with your loved ones while they are young and fit enough to is so important. These will be memories you’ll hold for a lifetime and are harder to come by as life and health become bigger obstacles with age.
Traveling with family also puts you in a new environment together. You can learn a lot of new things about the people that raised you and were raised with you in a new environment! Listening to stories you’ve maybe never heard before and sharing your own can deepen those relationships even more.
18. Solo Travel
As a big solo traveler myself, we all saw this one coming. Solo travel (especially for my fellow women out there) increases self confidence, builds creative problem-solving, and gives you a new and undeniable sense of freedom. Your itinerary is entirely up to you — but so are overcoming any challenges. It’s healthy and important to take yourself out of your comfort zone and tackle challenges. So while it may not be the easiest thing you do, solo travel helps you grow for years to come.
19. Travel with No Set Itinerary
You set your arrival and departure flights and nothing in between! Well, hopefully your first accommodation is booked, but everything else will be determined by your whims as you go. You know what I said about challenges being good for you? Here’s another one. Spontaneous travel planning opens up so many doors to new places and experiences you might not have known about before you arrived and started talking to locals and other travelers. It also means last minute travel booking and subsequent setbacks. But even those setbacks just open doors to new opportunities.
20. Disconnected Travel
Did you really travel if you didn’t live-post it on all your socials? Spoiler alert: yes you did. Sharing your travel adventures on your socials is a way to invite your friends along for the ride — but it also takes you out of the moment. Instead of living in the moment, you focus on how to document those experiences for the best reactions on your stories. This doesn’t mean don’t take photos — I love looking back on my travel photos! — but try to leaving curating your travels for an invisible audience instead of for yourself.
Connected to this, look beyond socials to find recommendations about where to go and what to do. Is social media really ruining travel? Test out the theory and find out for yourself!
21. Go Where You Don’t Speak the Language
Humans are very influenced by their peers, so the most talked about places tend to show up on our travel bucket lists — i.e. UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand. These places are worthwhile, don’t get me wrong, but they also provide an easy out for English-speakers. Traveling to places that don’t speak your language opens you up to so many new experiences.
Maybe you find you’re more outgoing or more shy than usual. Maybe locals will want to practice their broken English with you. You’ll experience how tricky it can be to order food, buy a bus ticket, meet new people, and learn how to communicate without language. Maybe you’ll even discover motivation to learn a new language yourself.
22. Language Exchange
You don’t even have to leave your own city for this travel bucket list item. Whether you got a taste of a new language while traveling, want to prepare for an upcoming trip, or just want to meet new people where you live, language exchanges are the perfect place to go! Libraries and other community groups will often host language exchange meet ups for their community. These are typically focused on helping immigrants or visitors practice and improve their English in a welcoming space, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have an equal exchange or that they’re all set up that way. Look up what language exchanges are in your area and maybe you’ll find a new best friend!
23. Local Cooking Lesson/Workshop
Creating organic moments of cultural exchange can be difficult depending on the length and type of travel. Fortunately, you can still participate in cultural exchange through cooking classes and other workshops! Many travel providers, like GetYourGuide, make it easy to find good, local workshops wherever you travel. And then, you can bring home a new recipe to share your experience and a new culture with your friends and family.
24. Learn to Cook Your Own Cultural Dish
We sometimes over focus what other’s can teach us that we forget we’re bringing our own culture to share too. As much as travelers love and appreciate when others share a cultural dish with us, we often forget we can return the favor! Learn at least one dish from your own culture or background so that you can treat gracious local hosts, fellow travelers, and anyone your path crosses along the way. Just be aware that certain ingredients may be difficult to find!
25. Travel Local
We can easily get caught up in the glitz and glam (hah) of international travel that we forget about our own backyard. Don’t let your travel bucket list be without the beauty and adventure you can find in your own neighborhood. The US is filled with stunning national and state parks, and even more local hidden gems. Day trips and weekends away can be just as exciting and fulfilling as any jaunt abroad.
(This also gives you something to share about your home with your fellow travelers when you are on international trips. Instead of just, ‘eh, there’s nothing where I’m from, it’s awful’. Which is definitely not something I’ve noticed with a lot of young travelers…)
26. Learn a Skill
Do you have a voice in the back of your head telling you not to learn something new because ‘when would I ever use that in my daily life’? I’m here to tell you that you can learn or try something new just for the sake of it! Participate in a surf camp in New Zealand, earn your diving certification in Thailand, do what makes you happy! Discover the joy of having hobbies just because you enjoy them, especially with other people who share that joy.
27. Start a Keepsake Tradition
Maybe you have an aunt with a huge collection of porcelain plates. Or a grandmother with books and books of journals from her whole life. Or a cousin with a jaw-dropping assortment of to-scale figurines from all around the world. Or maybe you’ve just experienced the dread of staring into a souvenir shop, absolutely stumped when trying to decide on the perfect souvenir.
Starting your own keepsake tradition early gives you more time to build your collection of memories. Whether that be writing travel journals, sketching landmarks or memorable scenes, collecting a specific tchotchke wherever you go, you’re building a vessel for your memories and experiences that you can treasure for a lifetime.
28. Say Yes to an Invitation
Of course, practice appropriate safety precautions and trust your gut, but those unforgettable moments of connection most often come from leaving your comfort zone and saying yes. This could be joining some fellow travelers from your hostel on a nearby hike, accepting a meal invitation from a local, or even just a friend asking to try out somewhere new.
Most recently, I accepted an invitation from a group of kiwi woman to come chat for a bit while I was camping solo in New Zealand. There were from all over and I learned so much about their lives and growing up in Aotearoa. In exchange, I taught them how to make their first ever s’mores. Equal trade in my opinion.
29. But Also, Learn to Say No
Learning and enforcing your own boundaries is a skill that will benefit you for a lifetime. As much as FOMO might try to haunt us, the more comfortable we get saying no to invitations or activities that we know don’t bring us joy, the more we open ourselves up for the things that will. Turning down an invite for a long night of partying when you’re already exhausted could lead to you meeting someone else who stayed behind and finding a friend for life.
30. Accept Your Place in the Universe
This final travel bucket list item is, ironically, about learning to let go of the idea of bucket lists or ‘doing enough to be considered enough’ in general. Whether this comes from visiting ancient homes like Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands, New Zealand’s 2000 year old Tane Mahuta kauri tree, or simply meeting so many people with such a vast array of life experiences, there’s something powerful about letting go of your worth as only a series of accomplishments. Ultimately, our short lives will not stop the universe from turning.
Don’t let other people make you feel bad about not visiting 100 countries, or seeing every World Wonder, or going to every hyped backpacker or tourist destination there is. Find joy in the present moment, share stories with strangers and old friends, and don’t compare yourself to every other traveler you meet. Follow your own path to what makes you happy and builds up your community.
The rest will follow.
Love this list! I think having a bucket list is such a good idea because it can help you feel rewarded and keep you moving forward. I am past 30 and would still like to do some of the things on this list like doing a language exchange or program!
There’s just something so satisfying about checking something off a list! I hope you find a local language exchange to check out – they’re such a cool way to meet new people.
What a great list! I didn’t get through all of these before age 30, but am still trying to work my way through some of these. Some of the top ones I enjoyed are studying abroad, language exchange programs, and thru hiking.
I didn’t get through all of these before 30 – I didn’t even know some of them existed until well into my twenties or later! It’s nice to have an earlier start on this list, but luckily we can keep traveling at any age.
I am sharing this link with my son in university. I think it will be a great read for him
That’s wonderful! I hope he gets some inspiration out of it
What a great list – I have done some of these but others were completely knee to me like “Woofing”. I loved learning more about it!
I’m glad you discovered some new potential travel ideas! Making this list was a big reminder of just how much there is to do in the world.