Solo travel

There are very few feelings that can compare to finding a place totally different from your home that starts to feel like home. After an initial phase of stress, sensory overload, language barriers, and cultural displacement, you start to get into a state of flow in a foreign place and get to live a temporary life as a completely different person for a few weeks. The self-confidence boost and personal growth benefits you gain are second to none, and this is the main reason I’ve taken multiple international trips by myself the past few years.

To those who haven’t ever done it, solo travel might come off as a strange and lonely experience. I get that. Not everyone feels comfortable being by themselves in a new place they’ve never been to and they want people with whom they can share their journey. They can’t justify spending thousands of dollars on a solitary travel experience, and I completely understand that. But if you’re able to get past that initial awkward feeling, it can be one of the most rewarding things you can do for yourself. It certainly has been for me.

I actually didn’t intend to start off solo traveling as a lifestyle. The reason I took my first international trip by myself was because none of my friends were into traveling as a hobby and didn’t want to spend a lot of money on it. So I just went by myself. That first trip was to Scandinavia, where I went to Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Iceland. I traveled around the major cities by myself and absolutely loved it. I then did another one later that year where I went to Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary. I loved it even more. I then did one more to the United Kingdom and Netherlands. I followed it up with another longer one the next year to France and Italy. And just recently, I did an even longer one backpacking through Japan.

So what do I get out of this? Why don’t I just make plans with other people who have been wanting to go to these places too? A big reason for me is that I don’t necessarily travel for the same reasons that other people do. Usually, people want to go to major cities, hit up all the popular attractions, and move on to the next thing. Maybe get some drinks and go check out the nightlife. That’s great, but I’ve never been into any of that. I don’t like to drink when I’m traveling, and I don’t go clubbing at night. I don’t like to have a packed itinerary every day where you’re just hopping around the city with a tour group going from one place to the next. I don’t like to make reservations at all the good foodie spots or wait in like for some Michelin Star rated restaurant.

Instead, I like to just exist in the city as if I lived there. I like to take really long walks around the lesser known parts of the city to get a feel for what it’s like. I like to check out local cafés and linger there for hours. I like to sit at parks and read books or peoplewatch. I like spending entire days at military history museums and large libraries. I like to go out at sunrise and sunset to take a stab at some street photography. I like to go shop at the supermarket, buy strange ingredients, and try to cook some meals of the local cuisine myself. Most of all, I like to get bored in a city and wander around with no real purpose. I get to take in so much more about the place this way. Some of the best moments I’ve had in all my solo trips have been stumbling into random bookstores or interesting parks and spending entire afternoons there.

As you can tell, most of these activities are geared towards a very specific type of traveler, one who’s not in a rush to see and do everything but instead just takes it very slow and easy trying to appreciate the little things about the place. It’s very hard to find people like this to travel with, so I just go it alone. Moreover, all these activities take a lot of time. When I book these trips, I try to spend at least five days in a city. It usually only takes a day or two to hit up all the sightseeing spots, so to anyone else, those extra days would seem like a huge waste. I don’t even make a daily itinerary, it just sort of ends up happening spontaneously as the trip goes on. “You could easily fit in another city in this trip,” I get told. “There’s not that much to do there for a full week,” they say. Again, they’re a completely different type of traveler, so the advice doesn’t necessarily apply.

The biggest benefit of these trips by far has been the confidence boost. It can be incredibly intimidating to plan a trip to a country whose culture and lifestyle you know nothing about. You have no idea how you’re gonna get around, where you’re gonna live, what you’re gonna do and eat, and how you’ll just survive daily life in general. Especially when you’re doing it all by yourself. And I’m not gonna lie, it can be difficult for the first couple of days. You’re generally confused and lost, aren’t exactly sure where to go, don’t know the language, and have no concept of social norms. But as the trip progresses, these things get easier and you start to embrace them as a part of life in the city. By the end of it, you know all the subway lines, you know how to order food at a restaurant, you know the general value of the currency, and you’ll pick up enough phrases of the language to get by and ask for directions. This transition from total cultural cluelessness to a pseudo-integrated resident of the city happens so quickly that it’s intoxicating. It is by far my favorite part of these trips and I love experiencing a different way of living the same lifestyle I do at home.

The only downside of solo travel to me is that in order to get the most out of it, you have to do it in major metropolitan cities. They’re large and complex enough to wander around in for days on end and find interesting neighborhoods to explore, even a week into the trip. The cities are English-friendly and the locals are willing to help out tourists whenever they can. If you start wandering off the urban spots to smaller towns or places where you need to rent a car and drive around, it gets tougher. These places aren’t typically built with single travelers in mind and it can be tough to navigate the landscape by yourself. It’s hard to find places to stay at spontaneously and you usually need to have a planned itinerary with many tickets booked ahead of time. For instance, hopping around the islands of Greece or driving down the Nile in Egypt doesn’t seem very do-able as a solo trip. It’s certainly possible, but those are some I’d most definitely do with someone else.

One of the questions I get asked most frequently is whether or not I get lonely being by myself for weeks on end in a new country. The short answer is no, I don’t. I’ve been an introvert my entire life and am perfectly comfortable with my own company for days on end. I have no problem eating at restaurants by myself and no qualms about going to museums by myself (I’m like this with movies and concerts at home, too). I know these are inherently social experiences for most people, so it’s completely understandable when others don’t feel comfortable doing these things alone. I even know a few people who have gone on a solo trip or two and swear that they would never do it again because of how lonely it got. I don’t blame them at all. It’s not for everyone and it can certainly be tough when you want to share the experience with someone you know.

Overall, I absolutely love re-discovering the little things. Navigating from your house to the spot you need to go turns into an adventure of transiting different subway lines and learning the routes. Ordering food turns into a game of Google Translating the menu and figuring out what sounds good. Asking for directions turns into a sign language dance of hand gestures and awkward smiles. None of this involves the typical touristy stuff you’ve come to expect, and it’s a very refreshing experience. I always come back relaxed and filled with a renewed sense of purpose, because life is far too short to stay in one corner of the world and die.

If anything, I hope this post has inspired you to consider traveling differently. You get to learn so much about who you are as a person, and what your limits are (both physically and mentally). You’ll have a lot of time to think for yourself and re-consider major life choices (again, you have be comfortable with heavy introspection and self-reflection to enjoy this). You’ll come across seemingly impossible odds and somehow manage to overcome them. You’ll go through intense and overwhelming emotions and get through it. Your senses will be heightened the whole time and you’ll be a more alert traveler. You’ll start to feel like you actually live in the place you’re in and will never want to leave. All of these experiences are a massive confidence boost. You’ll feel like you can do anything and live anywhere with no issues. Most of all, you’ll be way more connected to the world as a whole. Even if you don’t feel comfortable traveling by yourself, at least try to spend some time getting bored in a city. Try to take it very slow and easy and cherish the small things. I’ll leave you with an excerpt from one of my favorite travel books, AA Gill is Away:

“The foreigner driving through the city from one museum to another is quite oblivious to the presence of a world he brushes past without seeing. Until you have wasted time in a city, you cannot pretend to know it well. The soul of a big city is not to be grasped so easily; in order to make contact with it, you have to have been bored, you have to have suffered a bit in those places that contain it. Anyone can get a hold of a guide and tick off all the monuments, but within the confines of the metropolis there is another city as difficult to access as Timbuktu once was.”