When we travel the world or fly somewhere for a couple weeks vacation the process is almost always the same. We have a relatively well-crafted itinerary, we find our hotel to stay in, see the sights, eat some of the best food of the area, and then check the place off our list. This next experiment is designed to make traveling with your partner or friend something exciting and unique.  

It’s interesting to think of the ways we meet our loved ones and how our lives intersect by chance. One day we bump into somebody and years later we are still with that person and we look back and think, if we had never met in that small instance, our lives would be radically different. This experience plays with the idea of crossroads and life intersections. It explores the rejoining of partners and rediscovering each other at different times in different places. The experiment is an ambitious one that can take you and one of your favorite people anywhere across the globe.  The concept is somewhat complex, but I’ll try my best to describe it to you here.  

First things first, with your partner or close friend think of the destinations in the world that are some of the highest on your list. Think about, research, and play around with these destinations drawing up a plan of travel including time together and time apart in small to large bursts of time.  For example, plan a trip plan that looks something like: 2 days together 4 days apart, 2 days together one week apart, one week together one week apart, 2 weeks together 2 weeks apart. Lastly, cap things off with one final destination weekend.

Treat each destination as an intersection point at a famous or specially selected landmark. At each intersection point compare each other’s travel stories challenging each other to come back with wilder and more interesting tales. Decide that each of you will take video of your most recent parting adventure creating at least a half hour of video of sites, personal logs, or things of interest.. If you like, design exciting and interesting rules for your trip while you are together or while you are away. Create a challenge to go without sleep on your second crossroads stretch, plan time away spent unrestricted, or meet at each intersection point with a new look, disguise or faux identity pretending the last leg completely redefined you as a person. You can decide to interweave each crossroads with role-played pickups at the hottest bar in town or launch games of chase and pursuit with each new encounter.

Make the destinations ever more exotic or outrageous over the course of the trip. Take the time to really make the event something out of the ordinary and create moments unforgettable and well spent. Use it as a way to explore a different side of yourself and seek out parts of the world you have never seen. Make the adventure something to talk about for years to come.