10 Experiences Every Traveller Should Have Once

There is a specific kind of memory travel gives you.

Not the "we went to Rome and saw the Colosseum" memory. Not the "we ate that great meal in Lisbon" memory. Something deeper. A moment that becomes a marker in your life. The kind of experience where, years later, you can still name the day of the week it happened on, still describe the light, still hear the exact sound of it.

Those are the experiences worth chasing. And they are almost never the ones on the top of the tourist checklist.

Here are ten I believe every traveller should live at least once. Some I've had. Some are still on my list. All of them, I believe, mark you.

1. A Sunrise in a Wine Region

The first light on rolling vineyards. The mountain behind still in shadow. Birds waking up in every direction. Somewhere, a rooster. Or in my case, a peacock.

That's how I woke up on our first morning in Stellenbosch. A peacock walking through the estate, calling out to the sunrise, and me at the window with a coffee, thinking "how is this real."

Cape Town light does something no other place I know does. Not a cloud. A sky so clear you can see the curve of the earth. And in wine country, that clarity meets the vines and turns everything gold.

The verdict: you don't understand slow travel until you've watched a wine region wake up.

2. A Night Train

There is nothing quite like falling asleep in one country and waking up in another.

Mine was a French ski train. My mother, my sister, and two friends who are more family than friends by now. We were going to Val Thorens a ski town in the Tarentaise Valley in the French Alps. Bunk beds. Cabin barely wider than the window.

You wake up somewhere different. That's the magic. Not the journey, the reveal. Hot chocolate at first light while the landscape has changed completely around you.

The verdict: every traveller should sleep on a train at least once.

3. A Dinner With Locals

The one on my list I haven't ticked yet.

Not a restaurant. Not a hotel dining room. An actual home. An actual family. An actual table where you don't recognise the dishes. Where somebody's grandmother made the sauce.

Every traveller I know who has had this experience says the same thing. That was the meal I remember most. Not the Michelin dinner. The one I ate off a plate in someone's kitchen.

The verdict: the best meal of your life is usually the one nobody put on a menu.

4. A Festival Abroad

I've had two, and both marked me.

The first was Les Vieilles Charrues in France. Two friends. Tents. Sleeping little. Eating badly. Laughing constantly. Over the days, I saw Michel Polnareff, Pharrell Williams, the Pixies, and Flume, who is still one of my favourite artists in the world.

The second was Rihanna at the Stade de France. Golden circle. Three metres away from me. A wall of sound and light coming off eighty thousand people singing along, and her, right there, glowing.

Two very different scenes. One rural, festival-tent energy. One massive-stadium spectacle. But both had the same effect. There is something about music with a foreign accent. Music that is of somewhere. You go home changed. You've been part of something a country did.

The verdict: you don't visit a country until you've stood in a crowd there

5. A Traditional Massage in Its Country of Origin

Cape Town again. On a hill above Stellenbosch, at an African sanctuary. A traditional massage with warm pouches, oils I couldn't name, and hands I'll never forget.

The most beautiful part wasn't the treatment. It was the women.

Every one of them a survivor. Women who had lived through violence, loss, invisibility, sometimes worse. And yet, the softest hands I've ever been touched by. There was so much life in that room.

Some experiences transform the body. Some transform something else. This one did both.

The verdict: a real treatment in the country the treatment comes from is nothing like the version of it that travels.

6. A Short Cruise (Two or Three Nights)

Mine was between Sweden and Finland. Two people madly in love, a cabin with a story we still laugh about, and a ferry that turned into a floating party as soon as the sun set over the Baltic.

I was suspicious of cruises for years. Big ships. Endless buffets. Not my thing. But a short cruise, especially between countries you would not otherwise cross by boat, is a completely different experience. You dance. You eat. You sleep on water. You wake up in a new country.

The verdict: try the short version before you write off the whole idea.

7. A Hot Air Balloon Ride at Sunrise

Not yet. Coming very soon. This one is on our very near horizon and I already know it will be one of the ones I remember for life.

Floating. Silence except for the burner. A landscape becoming golden underneath you. Then landing somewhere in the middle of nowhere and drinking champagne with people you didn't know at breakfast.

Some experiences you don't need to have done yet to know they will matter.

The verdict: book the balloon. Every time you have the chance.

8. An Opera in Its Country of Origin

Still on the list.

Opera in Vienna. La Scala in Milan. Salzburg during festival season. Something about hearing a form of art in the language it was made for, in the city that shaped it. Different from watching it anywhere else.

I'm saving this one for a European autumn trip in the next few years. Some experiences deserve to be planned properly.

The verdict: art hits differently when you hear it at home.

9. A Rooftop Night in a Big City

Still on my list. I don't know why I haven't ticked this one yet.

A rooftop somewhere loud and beautiful. Rome. New York. Bangkok. Marrakech. A drink. A view. That specific rooftop energy where you are above the noise of the city, watching it live under you.

The verdict: every big city deserves a night watched from its roof.

10. A Night in a Japanese Capsule Hotel

The one I know I won't love, but I want to have done at least once.

The tiny space. The efficiency. The strangeness of sleeping in something the size of a coffin, next to strangers doing the same. Not romantic. Not comfortable. But utterly Japanese. And that's the point.

Some experiences are worth doing not because they're pleasant, but because they teach you something about a country you could not have learned from a normal hotel.

The verdict: discomfort in the right place can be as memorable as luxury.

The Real Answer

I've had five of these. I have five to go. That is exactly the right ratio, I think.

The point of a list like this isn't to tick everything off. It's to remind yourself that a certain kind of experience is out there, and it will change you if you let it in.

The trips you remember longest aren't measured in countries. They're measured in moments.

The peacock in Stellenbosch.

The train in the French Alps.

The girls dancing next to me while Rihanna was three metres away.

The women's hands in Cape Town.

The ferry crossing the Baltic at midnight.

Five moments. Five markers. And five more waiting.