Please analyze with respect to a person of sufficient means and career to travel for shorter durations in future as per job allows.

I also seek adventure, climbing, backpacking, pristine natural beauty, wildlife, scenic driving routes & things you can't do anywhere else in the world.

I don't want to fly in, check in a hotel, go to local shops, famous buildings, theaters, museums and come back; this guy wants it raw and rugged!

And here's part of my answer (for the full answer click here):

"Considering you'll have opportunities to travel for shorter amounts of time in the future, having a month is definitely the time to tackle one of the great travel journeys, leaving the easier to reach places for another time." 

Writing the answer reminded me of the trips I'd still like to take.  I was starting to wonder if there were many places I still wanted to travel to.  Don't get me wrong, I'll never say no to a trip, but after traveling to 30 countries and territories, I am lucky to say that I've been to the major places I've wanted to visit.  This doesn't mean I've been every place that has caught my interest, but everywhere I dreamed about as a child.  Now I've been reminded to look at travel as the adventure and not the isolated destination.  

The three trips I recommended to the question writer were the Camino di Santigo, along the Ancient Silk Road, and through South America to Ushuaia where the question author can wait for a ship heading to Antarctica.  These are actually three trips I really want to take myself, but of the three I've had my eye on the Silk Road for as long as I've been traveling.  Is it any wonder some of my favorite destinations and fascinations are at each end of the Silk Road?

The route I would take would be by train and would look something like this:

Start in Xi'an to revisit one of the first sights to take my breath away, the Terracotta Warriors.  

This was also my first introduction to the Uighur minority in China, which was my first spark of fascination with Muslim culture.   

Lanzhou to see the Labrang Monasteries.  

I'd head west to the Gobi Desert towards Dunhuang to explore the grottoes and the Cresent Lake.

When I was living in China there were two places I really wanted to visit.  The first was Tibet, the second was Xinjiang.  When I found out I was leaving China I only had time to choose one.  Tibet won out, which I'm really glad I took the time to visit back in 2007, before China started to over develop places like Lhasa with developments like massive shopping malls.  As much as I would love to go back to Tibet, missing out on Xinjiang has been weighing heavily on my traveling heart, so this trip would take my north of the Taklamakan Desert (China's stove) and into Urumqi and see the areas around.

Now here comes the tricky part, which way to go outside of China.  Central Asia is a little less known to me, which is what's so fascinating about the region, plus I'm a little ignorant about which countries have political instabilities that may prevent entry for an American citizen.  Better yet, which countries are open, yet have the possibility of being closed off to Americans in the future.  I remember having the chance to go to Syria in 2010, but decided against it, a decision I regret tremendously.  

The end would be in Turkey, if there is time I would visit more of the country before reaching Istanbul, one of my favorite cities in the world!