Whoever said “It’s the journey, not the destination” hasn’t been waylaid by Customs lately. Or paid through the nose to bring a suitcase on a plane. Or even filled up a tank of gas. The brutality of modern travel is well documented, and yet there is something incessantly compelling about that adage and the thrill of getting from point A to point B all in one piece and with a story to tell. So in the spirit of writers like Paul Theroux and Jules Verne, who famously championed an Odyssean approach to globe-trotting, what follows is an assemblage of 27 transportation-centric adventures: zooming down the dusty roads of Santa Fe, Easy Rider style; barreling across Bolivian salt flats in a four-wheel drive; sailing the Swedish coast aboard a 48-foot luxury yacht; and clinging for dear life to the back of an ostrich in South Africa among them. In other words, they’re the kinds of unconventional journeys that enhance your understanding of a place, that are adventures in and of themselves, and that guarantee at least one crazy story.