I’ve hit my 40 before 40 target…what’s next?

It feels like ages ago when I had the mad idea that, like lots of other travel obsessed people, I’d quite like to have visited 40 different countries before I turn 40. At the time I was 31 and I’d visited 14 countries (and that was counting England, Scotland and Wales, which are *not* counted in my final tally, so really I’d only visited 11!) It felt like visiting 29 countries in 9 years was going to be difficult to achieve, and then 2020 gave us a global pandemic and took 18 months of travel away, and so there were definitely points when I didn’t think I’d hit my 40 countries in time.

Fast forward to now, 14 months before I turn 40. At the time of writing this I have a trip booked for December which hits country number 39 and 40, and people are already starting to ask what’s next for me. I’ve been thinking a lot about it and realised it would make an interesting post, so here we are. What is next for me, travel wise?

What’s next for Laura?

I want to continue exploring the world with J. Hitting my 40 countries is an amazing achievement, but there are 195 countries in the world and I’d love to see all of them. That’s probably not realistic though, some countries I’ll likely never make it to, and I’m not setting another number target. I will keep count of my number though, and I’d also like to see J hit 40 (which he’s not far off, having visited 28 new countries with me during our 3 year relationship, so he absolutely will)

I have a few initial goals, and I’ve popped these below. Ideally, I’ll prioritise these.

I’d like to complete Europe-although with Ukraine still being attacked by Russia that’s not going to be a good idea right now, Russia and Belarus I don’t fancy visiting whilst everything is going on, so ‘complete Europe’ is a longer target. I do have eyes on Moldova, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco and Vatican City, and hope to visit all of those within the next three or four years.

I’d like to spend a month in one city, and really immerse myself into life there. Tblisi, Georgia, is at the front of my mind for that one, basing ourselves in a decent apartment and working from there, with the aim a couple of two or three night trips to Azerbaijan and Armenia, and some day trips from the city too.

I’d like to visit America, specifically to see our friends Kieran and Amber and their lovely boys, although I’d also like to visit New York-this may well end up being the same trip, or we may visit our friends in one trip and do New York another time. The working plan for seeing them in Atlanta is summer 2026, during the World Cup. I’d also really like to visit San Francisco, but this is definitely another trip!

I’d like to visit the ‘Stans’. Everyone’s heard of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and probably Uzbekistan, but I’d like to also visit Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. These aren’t going to be cheap or easy, but they will be really interesting and a great experience. I’m working on a plan for how seeing some of these countries might look.

2026 is going to look pretty different for me for travel, as we’re likely to do two big trips-America in July and something in December for my 40th, and not much else. It will mean that my content on Inside Laura’s Head won’t have lots of new trips to be written about, but I will be able to do more detailed posts about previous trips as well as try different types of content. I’m excited for the change.