Solo traveling is where I learned how to be alone. Turns out, I don't mind hanging out with myself. Not an insane revelation, but an important one.
Yet when I try to convince people to solo travel, I encounter so much hemming and hawing, so much resistance. I suppose there's a safety aspect. I'm male and can't speak about traveling as a woman or trans-man. But I do meet many female travelers. And I don't know significantly more guys who solo travel.
I'd imagine there's a fear of loneliness, of homesickness, of paralysis in face of being so untethered. Which, yes, can happen. It comes in waves. Some days I'd be horribly, terribly lonely. Some days I'd do almost nothing. It always passed.
Anybody who has the time, the money, the temptation to travel alone should do it. Which is often less than people imagine. Flights have gotten incredibly cheap. Hostels are acceptable for a few weeks. Food can be bought on the street or prepared from grocery stores. Every country, every city has low income people, and they still eat.
The lifestyle certainly suits the young more than the old. So then why do so many of my young friends delay traveling? Why are they so resistant to the idea of slowing down their education a little to see the world? I know, I know. They need the money. But I do have friends who aren't stuck in a hyper-competitive race to optimize their earnings by age 25. Who are fortunate to take the luxury of a break.
I shouldn't care this much. Yet I can't help but find it so odd that people require someone else to be with them while traveling. If I had to find a travel partner with the same time off, similar goals with traveling and who I wouldn't murder after a week or two, I'd probably be stuck at home.
I think solo travelling requires a specific type of say introvert personality. As you write, most people are scared of this. And when they do travel without a supporting group, they go... to see friends/family somewhere. I see it so many times around me. People literally rather abandon their dream vacation for a mediocre one with less than ideal companions just to not travel alone.
I am like you too. I am also an introvert. Also I don't travel to rest, but to have as intense experience as possible. Not necessarily only positive, intensity is more important. Often I feel like I need another vacation after a vacation, this time for resting. It is so fulfilling to challenge oneself a bit. There are great life lessons to learn - throw yourself into the trip, without precise plans, and let it unfold on its own.
That said, I just had a son, and I will gladly switch to family-only travel. But all of you, before you reject this form, try it at least once, in some less civilized place. I can recommend India. Just buy a return ticket and some guide book (this part ain't mandatory). You won't forget the experience till your last second on earth. This I can guarantee you.
Want to note that a certain level of outgoingness is very beneficial when traveling solo. But that comes from self-appreciation. You want to be so comfortable by yourself that you're enjoying meeting new people.
Intensity is crucial for me too. I embark on an adventure, not just a sight-seeing exercise. And whatever happens, good or bad, is what I'm after.
There's one thing preventing me from traveling alone: a deadly allergy to sesame. This is an ingredient that gets into everything, and it's often very hard to communicate reliably to people how serious it is if I accidentally eat it. Do you know many solo travellers with obscure and serious allergies? Any tips?
Not the same, but I'm deathly allergic to yellow jackets and I travel alone in the woods all the time. My solution is to carry four Epipens and hope for the best.
I did get stung once, but luckily I was within a mile of a road and hitchhiked to the nearest ER.
100% agree with you on solo travelling: I am not daunted in any way by the idea of days-long-trips alone with my thoughts, a notebook and my kindle. In fact, often I'll seek out long-distance travel by train over flying precisely to experience some alone-time.
I have travelled extensively alone as a woman - there is a safety aspect regardless of gender. It has its own benefits as well as the obvious downsides. For example I found home-stays or BnBs that more easily accepted a solo female and I was welcomed into many family's lives.
I'm a young person and would like to travel solo, but there are still major obstacles. In my case debt. It's not like I'm just stuck in the rat race, I made some bad financial decisions when I was young and now if I froze the progress I've made and went on a long holiday it would be absolutely disastrous to me long term.
There is something to be said for optimizing your career rather than traveling when you are young. I chose to delay my career and education to travel and while it taught me to enjoy my own company and has given me great insight into a lot of things I still hesitate to recommend it to people.
Fact is that life is a 'choose your own adventure' kind of game and most people grow into that understanding slowly as they dive deep into their cultural norms. Traveling young exposes you to this idea when you are a bit too idealistic to make good use of it.
For example, having a shared context / assumptions is a prerequisite for successfully raising a child (nevermind that you brainwash it into your assumptions, at least you are in approximate agreement with you spouse and have relative confidence in your opinions).
What ends up happening to many travelers is that they return to find that their original culture isn't special but rather represents some arbitrary set of choices in the spectrum of possible cultures. Probably there will be a realization that some of these choices are less than optimal.
The idealist sets out to 'convince people' or believes they've now got the right idea about things, even if you are relatively pragmatic and just pick up some slight quirks it's still often enough to isolate you from the most boring part of society. The part that hands out 'normal jobs' and supports the dominant political party.
From there things go downhill because people start to associate 'quirky' or 'weird' with you and you silently become a cautionary tale of the dangers of traveling ("it will undo your conditioning", "you will become isolated from the herd and exposed to danger"), however on the surface the reasoning will always be: "it's so dangerous, there are all of these things that could go wrong.." or "I am this kind of person and elsewhere I will face prejudice" a.k.a. "here I have special status that I am unwilling to let go of".
This kind of situation eventually turns people off traveling and they recondition themselves to fit into some group (maybe expats maybe back home) vacation is spent on "holiday" not traveling but maybe they manage to leverage some small idea they gained on their travels and make a profit, others don't give up on traveling but do so at the cost of everything else until all they have left is bragging in some hostel, finally there are the grown up idealists that have sorted out their beliefs over multiple years of battling with the status quo, they live a somewhat reclusive lifestyle and if they know what they stand for and act with some conviction they sometimes manage to earn the respect of others and move the culture forward a cycle of computation but most will be ignored quietly so long as they don't upset anyone.
Meanwhile the people who optimized school and career are reaching the brink of breakdown from never giving themselves the time off to figure out what they are doing. However they have plenty of money to take that time off and their main struggle will be existential crisis, physical ailments, being a workaholic or some other stress related injury.
My belief is that the right path is more balanced, when I was traveling all over the place I was going too fast and I had no aim or reason, I was just there. Slowly I realized that everyone around me traveled for a purpose, they wanted to go skiing or to see something they attached importance to or meet someone they were good friends with etc.
The balance I was missing was the comfort of having a reason or support and the balance others often miss is the courage to face the unknown. The right idea is to travel in the place you are (stepping out of the comfort zone) and to live in the place you travel to, that is, always be constructing your home. Even if you only stay for a couple of nights, no matter how short the stay it is never an excuse to "put up with your environment" - of course you need to be realistic about what you can accomplish but never shut off this part of your mind that is making a home.
> Why do we travel? Among other things so we meet people who don't think they know us once and for all; so we may again experience what is possible in this life.
-- Max Frisch
> Warum reisen wir? Auch dies, damit wir Menschen begegnen, die nicht meinen, daß sie uns kennen ein für allemal; damit wir noch einmal erfahren, was uns in diesem Leben möglich sei.
Yet when I try to convince people to solo travel, I encounter so much hemming and hawing, so much resistance. I suppose there's a safety aspect. I'm male and can't speak about traveling as a woman or trans-man. But I do meet many female travelers. And I don't know significantly more guys who solo travel.
I'd imagine there's a fear of loneliness, of homesickness, of paralysis in face of being so untethered. Which, yes, can happen. It comes in waves. Some days I'd be horribly, terribly lonely. Some days I'd do almost nothing. It always passed.
Anybody who has the time, the money, the temptation to travel alone should do it. Which is often less than people imagine. Flights have gotten incredibly cheap. Hostels are acceptable for a few weeks. Food can be bought on the street or prepared from grocery stores. Every country, every city has low income people, and they still eat.
The lifestyle certainly suits the young more than the old. So then why do so many of my young friends delay traveling? Why are they so resistant to the idea of slowing down their education a little to see the world? I know, I know. They need the money. But I do have friends who aren't stuck in a hyper-competitive race to optimize their earnings by age 25. Who are fortunate to take the luxury of a break.
I shouldn't care this much. Yet I can't help but find it so odd that people require someone else to be with them while traveling. If I had to find a travel partner with the same time off, similar goals with traveling and who I wouldn't murder after a week or two, I'd probably be stuck at home.