Everyone who knows me knows that I love to travel. The first question I am asked is, “What is your favorite place?” Well, that answer requires no thought.

I have been to 68 countries, six continents and 385 cities outside of the USA. There is nothing quite as enchanting as watching a sunset seated on a camel in the Sahara Desert, sleeping in a Berber tent and waking up to watch the sunrise. I have walked the Wall of China not all of it!!, climbed the ruins of Angor Wat in Cambodia, trekked up to the Eagles Nest in Bhutan and prayed that I wouldn’t see the head of a hippopotamus while gliding in a mokoro (a dugout canoe) in the waters of Botswana. Flying low in a four-passenger plane over the 1500 ft. high dunes of Namibia with the sun changing, the pastel colors of the sand is truly breathtaking. Fishing for piranha in the Amazon (which the natives eat) was a bit creepy and snowmobiling on a glacier in Iceland was a lot scary. Then there was the surprise of going to a wonderful concert, in a jewel box of an opera house in Ulanbataar before boarding the Trans Siberian train, traveling through six time zones going from Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, Siberia, and arriving in Moscow.

But my favorite? A small, very beautiful country which has had more than its share of tragedy – Rwanda. I read about a Gorilla Trek and I said yes! What an exciting and exhilarating experience. It was a hard two hour trek up a mountain, walking behind a guide who was cutting a path with a machete, to get to where there was a family of gorillas. To be up close, I mean really up close, to a silverback gorilla is stunning. He was very watchful of us and his family, which included three small romping baby gorillas with their mama. We stayed quietly with the family for one hour and I loved every minute of it. The guide, Mumitito, had an exchange of grunts (conversation) with the silverback and I would swear that they understood each other. I can’t say that I looked forward to the two hour trek down the slippery mountain.

While I can’t imagine anything more exciting, I will keep trying to find out.

What I take away with me, besides all the wonderful memories, are the design concepts from all the different ethnic groups: luxurious silks, intricate tapestries, crude weaves with exotic designs, furniture and carpets woven for palaces and simple floor mats in yurts.

Where am I going next? I have a long list.

My mantra is a quote: “It is not the years in your life that count, but rather the life in your years.”

Award winning interior designer Anne Tarasoff has worked all over the world, taking on projects in Acapulco, Mexico; San Francisco, CA; Washington, D.C., and once furnishing a whole house in Calamata, Greece from blueprints. Along the way, she is always finding and buying unique and unusual items for the different projects she may be working on. She successfully balances career and family, and is happy to have two daughters in business with her. While Anne loves what she does, her true passion is traveling. She wants to go beyond the beyond.