The Value of Solo Travel
The lessons I learnt from travelling alone.
During my year as an international student in France, I spent my summer holidays travelling across Europe on my first entirely self-planned trip. I packed my backpack and ventured out alone on my first holiday as an adult, and I have never looked back. Ever since, solo travel has been my default way of travel and it has taught me so much.
Freedom
Travelling alone gives you the freedom of choice. You can set your budget, choose to splurge or go shoestring, decide your itinerary and what activities you want to do. It also allows you to decide how long you want to stay in a place and to change your mind if you want to leave and go somewhere else. Being alone affords you this flexibility that rarely comes with travelling with other people.
How to meet people
Having said that, travelling solo doesn’t mean being alone. On the contrary, I have met so many people from around the world during my trips and shared memorable moments with great company. In fact, we have even spent a few days of the trip together before continuing on our individual itineraries.
Most of the fellow travellers I’ve met have been in hostels. Whether it’s in the dorm room or the common area, you end up talking to others about where they’re from, where they were, where they’re going next and what they’ve seen and recommend. These are great opportunities to enhance your social experience while at the same time making improvements to your itinerary.
Thanks to my encounters in hostels, I’ve had my share of enjoyable experiences like having the pleasurable company of an Australian couple in the queue to enter the Vatican which took two hours, going on an impromptu trekking, canyoning and canoeing adventure with travellers from Hong Kong and Japan while in Slovenia, visiting an open-air photo exhibition in Copenhagen with a Norwegian dorm-mate on his way home and many more.
Another way I’ve met travellers is while trekking. The effort involved and deep appreciation for nature creates connections with fellow trekkers. Be it the strenuous 22-kilometre trek to sensational Trolltunga which broke my knees or the picture-postcard summit of Reinebringen, both in Norway, I met hikers who were not only great company but extremely kind and helpful.
Going off the beaten path means meeting travellers with whom you already have something in common — a sense of adventure and a setting that is away from most tourists. Many of them have become lifelong friends who have visited me at home and whom I have visited, thereby giving us more opportunities to travel and destinations to go to.
This is also a great way to meet locals, especially if you make the effort to learn a few words of the local language. Chances are, they will want to share their place with you by taking you around, showing you their home and their way of life.
I have experienced such magical moments where a young boy in Gavi, Kerala took me on a walk around the fields surrounding his village, and scores of conversations using public transport where you are more likely to meet locals than tourists. While looking for a bakery to buy bread in Sambava, Madagascar, I stumpled upon the Alliance Française, the institute in which I worked back home. I walked in, met the director and ended up talking to him for 2 hours. Next thing you know, I was invited to stay in his house and went to the local beach and restaurants with him, his housemate and their friends.
As a seasoned couchsurfer, I have had the privilege of meeting and staying with people in countries around the world and learning about their places, their food, their customs, habits and culture while sharing a bit of mine. These enriching experiences are what make travelling meaningful.
Other ways include asking someone to take a picture of you, striking a conversation with someone about a view, a museum or monument or a dish at a tourist spot or at a restaurant .
Meeting people with similar interests allows you to share your experience with others but with the added advantage of having no commitment towards them beyond the time you spend together. Compare that to trips with family and friends, where you might want to do different things or things differently which could lead to conflicts.
Learn about yourself
Solo travellers learn the important lesson of spending quality time with oneself without getting bored. There are so many ways to beat boredom like reading a book, writing, listening to music, observing things around you and contemplation.
I have learned to be more patient, for example. I remember spending inordinate amounts of time in bush taxis or taxi-brousse in Madagascar just waiting for them to leave. Sometimes they were packed to capacity but would still wait for an hour to squeeze in an additional passenger or two. You just learn to plan better, not get ahead of yourself in organising the rest of your day and appreciate that in some countries, locals need to make that extra buck to make a living.
You also develop problem-solving and time management skills and self-reliance. When I was turned away from Turkey where I was to spend 30 days, I had to come up with a new plan, change all my tickets and chart a new journey. I had to think on my feet and find other places to go to while keeping my budget in mind. I ended up visiting incredible places like Crete and the Dolomites.
Another time, I had taken a ferry to Moskenes port in the Lofoten Islands of Norway. When at 4 am, my host wasn’t there to pick me up, I struck up a conversation with a couple who willingly lent me their phone to call him and stayed there talking to me until my friend showed up.
You learn to step out of your comfort zone, shed your inhibitions and approach people. This is a useful skill to have in your personal and professional life.
A long conversation with a sweet vendor in Pushkar in Rajasthan, India comes to mind. He told me that he really wanted to travel but was afraid to do it on his own and asked me how I managed it. I told him that if I hadn’t been alone, I would’ve surely bought some sweets, paid and gone away, whereas, there I was, chatting leisurely with him as he showed me how he made his sweets, what ingredients he used, listening intently about his family, his business and his dreams. I hope he managed to go on his dream trip to Goa.
On the same trip, I met an English couple with whom I exchanged phone numbers. We shared a taxi from Ajmer to Pushkar, hiked there together before continuing to our own destinations. Then, we reconnected in Jodhpur where we shared meals and visits. We’re still in touch from different continents. I also met an Austrian backpacker with whom I visited a palace, an American who spent the day with me visiting forts outside Jaipur and a Finnish wildlife enthusiast with whom I explored Bharatpur bird sanctuary. All this, on a solo trip.
Cut your budget
Sure, travelling with someone could help you share a hotel room and transport costs, but you could do this solo as well. Every time I stepped out of my comfort zone and made a plan with fellow travellers, we shared a taxi, a tuktuk or a rickshaw, bargained for a better deal for an activity we wanted to do and learnt from each other about how to find affordable, yet delicious meals by either sharing local restaurant recommendations, eating at a market or cooking together in the hostel kitchen.
On the fourth day of a 5-day trek through a remote rainforest in eastern Madagascar, I met a French couple. We were all yearning so much for new company that we immediately became friends. At the end of the long expedition, we shared a hotel room at a port town called Maroantsetra waiting for a boat to exit the region, travelled together and met again in the capital. Later, they visited me in India and I stayed with them in France.
Reflect
An exercise I try to do every night of my trip, while in transit and at the end of the journey is to reflect on all the things I did, saw and experienced and think about all the people I met and the things I learnt. Writing them in my journal makes the thoughts more permanent and the memories last longer. These moments of silent contemplation bring me peace, serenity and satisfaction.
You are never alone
If you are scared to go off on a trip on your own, remember that the secret of solo travel is that you are never alone.
You can choose to meet others and share moments but also have alone time when that is what you desire. So the next time you want to go on a trip but no one is free to join you, don’t be afraid; think about all the advantages of being on your own and embrace solo travel. You never know, it might just become your new way of travelling.
This story is dedicated to all my fellow travellers, hosts and encounters from my innumerable trips.
Hi, I am Prajwal Madhav. I hope you enjoy my posts.
