Mexico: It’s a sun-drenched world, the beaded sweat gathering at your temples as you climb through jungles to reach Mayan ruins. Colorful buildings are built into the landscape; in the village square kids play and lovers dance to the songs your abuela cooked menudo to every Sunday morning of your childhood. The Caribbean and Gulf seas are warm and aquamarine, allowing the kaleidoscope fish to frolic beneath your feet as you swim for hours. The Pacific Ocean is sparkling sapphire, deep and cold and home to humanity’s most [unncessarily] feared shark. She breaches the water’s surface in search of food and you wonder what it would feel like to sink.

New Zealand: It feels like you’ve stepped into a Miyazaki film. How can a land so relatively small hold so many different landscapes? The pastel lupines take your breath away as they sway gently in the wind. The sacred rainforests are balmy, swallowing you whole and spitting you back out at the bottom of a waterfall. The fjords are filled with a dense, eerie fog that envelops you and the wind-swept prairies are at the tail-end of bloom. You climb volcanoes and swear you smell of ash for days afterward. You drive through small towns that are reminiscent of the American south and while exploring an abandoned chapel, the door mysteriously slams shut behind you.

Japan: Tokyo feels like being dropped into a fever dream, or a panic attack. In constant technicolor commotion, everyone around you bustles, speaking a tongue you know nothing of. It’s wholly unfamiliar, and you relish the thought of being a stranger amongst 14-million strangers. From a rented room tucked away in quiet, you watch as the looming mountain is dwarfed by an autumnal sunset, the forests foreboding and suffocating. You’ll never see another cherry blossom without thinking of Kyoto.

Rwanda: You’re bushwhacking in the rainforest, crawling on all fours through tight spaces. It’s hot, oppressively hot, and muggy, and miserable. Insects buzz deafeningly into your ear and the stinging nettle has already created itchy welts on the palms of your hands. There are men armed with machine guns who yell into walkie talkies but speak to you in kind tones. Just when you’re ready to give up, you see them: the park’s elusive silverback gorillas. The mothers nurse their young, the teenagers swing from branch to branch above your head, the alpha glares at your group—not in fear or anger or even curiosity, but secure in his knowledge that you are in his world.

Switzerland: You sneak out of bed, praying you don’t wake your daughter, at your cabin every 4am to trek miles to a secluded meadow at the crest of the tallest mountain, all to watch the sunrise. It’s June and it’s warm but breezy; the wildflowers are freckles on the face of the valley. You eat rich chocolate and creamy cheese on crusty loaves of yesterday’s fresh-baked bread. Somewhere near, a serene mint lake awaits you. Songbirds serenade you your whole walk home.

Iran: You dreamt of Persepolis as a child. After two visa denials, you finally get the call and just days later your stomach is doing cartwheels as you impatiently wait for the plane to touch down. The streets of Tehran smell of saffron and garlic, and everyone you pass smiles at you. Ancient mosques and palaces are adorned in shimmery tiles of cobalt, teal, and gold. Everything here was made meaningfully; it’s so different than any place you had ever been before it. Your now-toddler son still sleeps with the intricately patterned woven blanket a colleague’s mother made for you after filling you to the brim with delicious plates of tahdig, fesenjan, ghormeh sabzi, and abgoosht. When you dream of Persia now, you wake up swearing you can still taste the pomegranates.

Greenland: The midnight sun is a pale pink over the horizon, casting rose light over the stark white icebergs. Cabins painted in primary colors are dotted over rugged terrain. A fisherman tells you: here, there are so many places where no one could hear you scream and laughs as he walks off toward the harbor. You slowly wade your way into the bone-chilling water and dive beneath the endless still into the unlit abyss. A humpback whale and her calf swim gracefully nearby—close enough to touch, though of course you don’t—and you lock eyes with the mother for the briefest but most beautiful of moments.

Pakistan: You cross the Wagah border on foot and make a mental note to call your father and let him know you’re safe. Everyone back in the States is worried, but Lahore’s palette of rusted colors makes you feel at peace. You hike the stunning countryside, and it’s as if whatever deity in charge of these things has turned the vibrancy up to its maximum. The forest and plains are bright spring green, the lakes an unreal turquoise. Quaint villages are set into the hills while mountain dogs and their keepers herd sheep.

Norway: Wintry coastal towns stretch as far as your vision reaches while powder-soft snow gathers at your feet. You chase the Northern Lights for days before finding them—to your eyes, they are desaturated shades of lime, fuchsia, and violet stretched across the inky black and star-speckled sky, but your camera sees the phenomenon in its full neon splendor. A summer earlier, you camped on beaches with Australian friends-for-the-weekend whose names you can no longer remember. They take you kayaking in the fjords and you watch in awe as a pod of orcas hunt unsuspecting harbor seals.

Brazil: It took waking up before the peach colored dawn to find one small stretch of deserted beach. Rio is packed to the brim with gorgeous women slicked in tanning oil and the men who follow them around like hungry dogs. The favelas hold shacks built on top of each other, entire communities abandoned by their governments, but they retain love—an older brother protecting his siblings, a small girl coaxing a scrawny cat out from underneath a flat-tired car, a young couple attached at the hips and mouth like bubblegum—there is always, always love to be found, even in the most hopeless places.