Dec 28 2021
Travel That Changes You: 10 Favorite Adventures Of 2021
Ann Abel, Senior Contributor
Travel
I’ve never had a bucket list—I detest the term. But I have been gratefully keeping track of my peak adventures and experiences for nearly as long as I’ve been writing about travel.
The year 2021, was, of course, one of reduced expectations and gratitude for ever-smaller little pleasures and tiny glimpses of magic. Maybe transformative travel was too tall an order this year; maybe just getting out and feeling alive was a thing to celebrate.
With that in mind, here are my peak experiences of 2021—the things that made me feel happily, gratefully alive.
Flying over Armenia
My host during a culinary exploration of Armenia liked to throw out comparisons to both James Bond and Indiana Jones. The country especially lived up to those pronouncements during a ride on Wings of Tatev—a five-kilometer journey on the longest double-track cable car in the world, at some points suspended some 1,000 feet above the ground. Afterward, the trip back to the capital of Yerevan was in an Airbus H130 flown by Armenian Helicopters, zooming (the good kind) over the mountains of the Syunik Province as the sun was setting.