My Bucket List

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What are the various things you would love to do in life?

You only have one life! Why not create a list and start working on accomplishing it right away?

Here is my list!

NOTE: Bucket lists exist to serve you. You don’t exist to serve your bucket list. So, my list might keep changing every now and then. Might drop and add items. The key is… the list should be meaningful to you and should make you happy. When it doesn’t, the item doesn’t deserve to be on the list.

Also, my list could be paradoxical. I might do one thing in a year and end up doing entirely opposite thing in the next year. I guess any list should be flexible enough to accommodate such eccentricity.

A dash across words means either an edit or accomplished or dropped from list.

Personal

1. Build a home library of great books and documentaries
2. Do a Biriyani round up of at least 50 good hotels in Bangalore and blog about it
3. Figure out what I really want to do in life
4. Figure out 10 5 things down to nitty gritty specifications that make me truly happy
5. Practise minimalism and simplify life – in at least 3 areas in life: finance, gadgets and household items
6. Help my wife achieve one of her biggest goals
7. Build a small beautiful mountain home
8. Own a jeep
9. Create a list of 100 50 great books and read them
10. Create a list of 100 inspirational movies and watch them
11. Experience total bliss
12. Make a difference in at least one person’s life
13. Volunteer for a worthy cause for at least a month
14. Learn to play the Tabala / guitar / keyboard
15. Have at least 25 great friends
16. Donate a cycle each to 5 poor guys who need one badly for their business (Dropped it, as I felt there are better ways to help others)
17. Spend a year as an experimental agriculturist (Dropping this, doesn’t really interest me these days)
18. Teach my daughter how to play Scrabble, Monopoly, Chess and other games once she grows up
19. Have a pet dog
20. Gaze at the stars in absolute darkness (no man made light interference at all) and realize how trivial your life is on the history timeline of the Universe (Did this at Bryce Canyon, USA, May 2010)
21. Watch Charlie Chaplin movies with my daughter

Sports & fitness

1. Exercise and get into the best shape of your life, ever
2. Run a marathon
3. Play badminton for 5 continuous days in a week
4. Be an early riser for a whole month
5. Sleep for 8 hours every day in a month
6. Learn swimming
7. Cycle 1000km in a month (Did it for TFN and practising for it, Dec 2010)
   
8. Cycle 10000km in a year
9. Go on a multi day cycling tour with my daughter when she is a grown-up

Financial

1. Build a portfolio of (undisclosed) Rs before 2015
2. Create a sound investment philosophy and a system
3. Practice zero lazy cash management
4. Create enough passive income so that I don’t have to do anything for the sake of an income
5. Automate all bill and investment payments . Get online access wherever possible.
6. Re-read The Intelligent Investor
7. Read all of Buffett’s annual reports

Career

1. Be recognized as an authority in a field of expertise
2. Leave a valuable contribution in an area of expertise
3. Start my own company and make it profitable (work in progress)
4. Run the best library in a city / town
5. Run a bookstore
6. Give employment to at least 5 local people, preferably physically challenged and pay them better than market salaries
7. Attend the JLR naturalist training program (Done. Sept 2011)

Travel & photography – must do

1. Create a portfolio of 100 20 twilight photographs
2. Go on a road trip with no destination in mind
3. Go on a fantastic Himalayan trek
4. Manali – Leh bicycling
5. Go on a boat ride in the Sundarbans (Done in May 2011)
6. Write one of the best essays on birding in Nilgiris (almost there, need a bit more of work)
7. Climb the highest mountain in a country (Climbed Mt Kinabalu, Borneo in Sept 2010)
8. Spend a night sleeping in a boat (Done in May 2011, Sundarban)
9. Sleep in a rainforest (Bornoe)
   
10. Spend time observing the wildlife in Borneo (Done in Sept 2010)
    
11. Complete TFN (Dec 2010)
    
12. Spend time in one of the largest caves in the world (in Sept 2010 at Deers and Langs caves in Gunung Mulu)
    
13. Spend time wow’ing at Shivaji’s forts
14. Tour Laos / Cambodia / Vietnam / Bhutan on bicycle
15. Print my own book of 100 50 landscape photographs
16. Write a book on Nilgiris
17. Do a photo essay on the Nilgiris Mountain Railway (Planned, June/July 2011)
18. Cycle alone through a forest in the night (cycled in pitch dark from Gundelpet to Bandipur Country club in the night)
19. Trek through a rainforest in the night (At Uncle Tan’s, at Gunung Mulu and also at Mt Kinabalu)
    
20. Visit at least 15 countries (So far at 4, Canada, France, USA & Malaysia (Borneo))
21. Explore Nilgiris on a bicycle
22. Do the Upper Bhavani, Western Catchment trek
23. Do the Everest Base camp trek (Dropped. Given the garbage around the place and this being a ‘tent-city’, I think its not worth it these days)
24. Do the Zanskar frozen river trek
25. Discard all the rules of photography and create a portfolio of 25 crazy photographs
26. Explore the entire length of Western Ghats
27. Ride on 10 of the best cycle trails in India
28. Ride a camel in a desert
29. Stand in front of the Eiffel tower (Done in Aug 2008)
    
30. Go on at least 10 ten five plus days cycling tours
31. Visit the Canyons of USA: Bryce, Antelope, Grand, etc (Done in May 2010)
    
32. Have my picture taken with a Red Indian (Done in May 2010)
33. Touch the southern most tip of India
34. Walk on the longest canopy walkway in the world (Gunung Mulu)
    
35. Camp at Yosemite (June 2010)
36. Camp at Grand / Bryce canyon (May 2010)
37. Take bath in a hot spring
38. Spend time at 10 archaeological sites in the world / India
39. Go couch surfing
40. Bike on the Golden Gate bridge and Marin Headlands (June 2010)
41. Ride a cable car in San Francisco (May 2010)

Travel & photography – nice to do
(most of them are expensive and not feasible for my wallet )

1. Photograph Northern lights
2. Bicycle touring N. E. Indian states – Manipur, Arunachal, Meghalaya, etc
3. Trek on the Inca trail in Machu Pichu
4. Touch the southern most tip of Chile
5. Take a RTW trip
6. Walk on the Great Wall
7. Island hopping in Greece
8. Spend a week with the nomads in a Yurt in Mongolia (or Changpas of Changtang )
9. Live in a caravan / modified vehicle
10. Spend time observing nature at Galapagos islands
11. Fly in a balloon
12. Bicycle through Provence