Worlds to Imagine Introduction Imagine a lifelong honeymoon with the world you live in. Instead of lusting in frustration over seductive postcards and come-ons splashed across the pages of travel magazines, set a firm date for your new fling and give your desktop globe a spin. The whirling colors snap into focus as you touch the shaded outlines of a faraway country. Your fingertip explores those boundaries, defining remote regions where in real life a sensual, dreamlike world is in full swing. The crossroads of its latitude and longitude begin to pinpoint your wanderlust, and you succumb to a brand-new courtship. The unmistakeable allure of a global journey can engage you in a newlywed''s excitement. As you leave the airport, it becomes so easy to turn susceptible to the novel charms of fresh encounters. You''re mesmerized by the rhythmic babble of an unknown language, you sniff wistfully at the puzzling aromas that perfume your path, and you''re eager to sample dazzling markets where your taste buds will bloom, stimulated by unchartered flavors.

I suppose my own incorrigible passion for a kaleidoscope of stimuli was ignited decades ago when my grandparents chaperoned this spellbound ten-year-old on scores of visits to the New York World''s Fair, a showcase of Crayola hues, strangely foreign pavilions, and oddly orchestrated music -- acres bursting in a dizzying nonstop carnival of happenings. Perhaps it was then that I became awestruck by the simultaneity of life''s endless offerings. It now thrills me to my core to know that at the exact moment a saron-clad, bronze-skinned duckkeeper marches his chicks in single file through the morning mist of Bali''s sculpted rice paddies, blond children in a Swiss mountaintop hamlet are being tucked into bed to the soothing music of a parental bedtime story. I''m amazed that at precisely the same time, a satisfied snorkeler slathers suntan lotion over an exhausted body for a summertime sprawl on the powdery sands of Australia''s sunbaked barrier reef, a Sami reindeer herder navigates through a gentle Christmas Eve snowfall along a silent, moonlit forest path. It finally occurred to me that our daily existence unfurls entirely within the confines of a spinning, never-ending world''s fair. Twirling on its tilted axis in an eastward direction and at a jet plane''s clip, earth commutes around the sun at an astonishing 50,000 miles per hour. All that motion would seem to centrifuge the cultures and inhabitants of this planetary blender into one homogenized blur. What is actually happening is that the long-predicted global village has shrunk our world and its once-insurmountable distances.

As our sights become firmly fixed on e-mail and the Web, beepers and cell phones have strapped us closer together, and we find that supersonic flights and satellite imagery have brought the ends of the earth to within easy shouting distance. Yet there remain splendid pockets of tranquil isolation, apparently immune to the swirl of modern age. These bewitching regions, drifting sleepily in another time, conjur up a magical universe where we can lose ourselves as we plunge headlong into a new millennium. Embracing the ineffable essence of a distant era, we peel away the centuries, and moving across time zones, find ourseves even more compelled to alter our perspective than to adjust our watch hands. As we swerve inside those unpredictable curves of our travel, serendipity has a way of plopping into our laps, and we learn as much about who we are as about where we are. By discovering our own reflection in the curious gaze of a former headhunter, we understand ourselves in a different way and through these ancient eyes gain new wisdom. This valentine to the longing souls of romantic explorers offers up a candy-box assortment of tantalizing forays -- total immersions in mythic dreamscapes, fairy-tale sojourns, and epic adventures. You''ll need to be on your guard, though, against the heartbreak that can come with a wandering spirit: the earth is such an intoxicating place that it might not be long before you find yourself jealously eyeing still other worlds to imagine.