10 Best North America Travel Ideas

For every destination, every itinerary, and every road, there has always been an intrepid traveler who blazed the trail for everyone else. But that’s not the only thing that makes a person a "great traveler": beyond courage and vision, there is also the approach to the territory, the sharing of culture, and the results their adventure helped to achieve.

Digging through the distant reaches of my memory and school recollections, I’ve tried to reflect on the travelers in human history whose explorations changed our conception of the world and of travel.

Alexander the Great (356 BC - 323 BC)

Alexander III of Macedon, King of Macedonia, Pharaoh of Egypt, King of Persia, and Asia. His dream was to unite all the peoples of the world into one grand planetary kingdom. With his army, he crossed Asia Minor and traveled as far as India, founding cities, opening roads, and enabling a dissemination of knowledge and culture like never before. His goal was to reach "the end of the world," but he was forced to stop by his generals, thus establishing the concept that "one travels better alone."

Xuanzang (602-664)

A Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who, if he had had our technology at his disposal, would have been history's first travel blogger. He dedicated himself to a solo journey to discover the origins of Buddhism, leaving traces of his journey in his writings. He crossed China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India on foot, contributing through his traditions to pass down works that would have otherwise been lost.

Marco Polo (1254-1324)

The Venetian explorer and merchant, author of *The Travels of Marco Polo*, opened the doors of Asia to the Western world. Marco didn’t just visit Far Eastern countries; he became a friend and advisor to sovereigns and generals. He passed on a curiosity for a distant and very different world to his contemporaries and was the first Westerner to describe China, Tibet, Burma, and India in depth.

Ibn Battuta (1304-1369)

A Berber geographer whose homeland was modern-day Morocco. During his travels, he covered some 120,000 kilometers—no small feat at the time—across 44 modern countries, crossing the entire North African coast, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Middle East, even reaching China and Europe. For him, traveling was an honor and the fulfillment of a dream, a fact realized through the countless maps and accounts he left to posterity.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

An English naturalist and geologist, Darwin is the father of the theory of evolution and, in his own way, a rebel thinker himself. But not everyone knows that to pursue his studies, he sailed around the world, touching the coasts of South America, the Galapagos, Tahiti, Australia, Mauritius, and South Africa. Although Darwinian evolutionary theory is far from being proven with absolute certainty, the scholar's commitment allowed us to look at the history of the planet and its biological diversity with more rationality, analytical spirit, and curiosity.

Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930)

Norwegian. Skier, oceanographer, philanthropist, and father of polar exploration. He was the first to cross the icy moors of Greenland and navigate the Arctic Ocean. During one of his expeditions, he spent nine months on an Arctic island, surviving on polar bears and walruses. The technological innovations he designed are still used today in polar expeditions.

Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935)

Better known as Lawrence of Arabia, this famous British officer served as the liaison between the Allies and the Arab peoples subjected to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. He championed the cause of Arab independence and fought long and hard for the right to a homeland for Middle Eastern peoples, but he was betrayed by his superiors and saw colonialist greed devour his dream. He became a legend among his contemporaries and passed on a fundamental warning to future generations: a traveler does not conquer the territory he explores; he is conquered by it.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

A pioneer of the Beat Generation, his journey across the United States inspired his most famous novel, *On the Road*. Carefree, cynical, alcoholic, rebellious—Kerouac was the precursor to the backpacker. He traveled without a penny in his pocket, begging for rides and stopping to do odd jobs wherever he found himself. His experience inspired not only a generation of readers but several generations of travelers in love with the road and dangerously oblivious to their destination.

Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968)

A Russian astronaut, he was the first man in space (though not the first mammal: that was Laika the dog on Sputnik 2). With his Vostok, he completed one orbit around the Earth in 1961. Even if you aren't particularly interested in space, you must at least appreciate the courage of this man, who launched himself into the unknown in what would be considered today more or less a tin can topped with a bomb.

Tiziano Terzani (1938-2004)

A Florentine writer and journalist, best known for his chronicles in Vietnam and his essays on India and China. In the public imagination, Terzani is a smiling old man with neat white hair, a long beard, and a white tunic—a benevolent sage explaining his love for nature, surrounded by disciples. In reality, Terzani's journey was a trip through space and time full of critical genius, rationality, courage, and determination.