The beginning of a new year brings with it hope and expectation. Hope that this year will be a better year than the last, and the expectation that you will do better, be bigger, achieve more, because the ticking over into a new year always feels somehow like wiping the slate clean. A new year also brings with it new horizons to conquer and new paths to forge.

Schwedagon Pagoda, Yangon (Pic from http://www.asiapacific.anu.edu.au)

I don’t tend to make New Year resolutions – I make life resolutions. These tend to stick around for a bit longer, and because I give myself more leeway to attain these goals, they usually do get ticked off. Eventually.

These are the roads I mean to travel in the new year:

• Dog sledding, aurora hunting, fjord cruising and experiencing really really really cold weather in Norway.
• Chinese New Year with the family.
• Shopping up a storm and catching up with close friends in London after a too-long absence from my city of dystopian dreams.
• Exploring the stupas, temples and pagodas of Burma with my magic travel friend.
• Wine and vineyards and jazz festivals in the Hunter Valley, rugged up against the winter’s chill.
• French colonial architecture in Saigon and the turquoise waters and limestone formations of Ha Long Bay, Vietnam.
• Driving around New Zealand’s South Island in a summertime RV, pretending to be hobbits, going skydiving, swimming with dolphins and hiking in the great outdoors.

Anyone want to come along?

RVing in New Zealand (Pic courtesy of http://www.telegraph.co.uk)