But firstly, what does traveling alone mean exactly? This is an important question since this sentence can have different meanings depending on your character, your experiences, your fears…for some people, solo traveling can just be taking a plane on their own to go visiting a friend, while others may be more used to it and would consider it normal.
For me traveling on my own from one place to another is pretty common, so what I consider a solo holiday is spending some time as a tourist in a foreign country, being totally alone. It recently happened in a quite accidental way, I didn’t plan it: I was Workawaying in Portugal and I just decided my time there was over, and that I wanted to visit the country more thoroughly; so I booked a bed into a hostel and I spent 4 days traveling alone there.
Landing in Portugal for my solo holiday
Some people might say I was “solo traveling” also before, as I spent three weeks between Portugal and Austria Workawaying and I was with no one I knew. But that’s not what I mean because, even if it was challenging and I was alone, I was living at some people’s house and I had a destination and a schedule before leaving. Instead, when you travel alone as I mean it, you have no schedule, no plan, no friends, no one that will come and pick you up if you lose the bus, no one to go at the restaurant with…you are a tourist, you are visiting a foreign country, and you just do it on your own.
“Why should you do something like that if you have friends to travel with?“, you may be asking. If you do, maybe solo traveling is not for you, because you perceive a travel only as a holiday, where you spend time staying with your usual friends, doing your usual stuff, just being in a different place. But if you have ever only considered the idea of traveling on your own and you think it could be interesting, here I will give you a list of 10 good reasons for traveling alone that may help you doing it for the first time.
Traveling alone means also to get lost
1) Traveling alone allows you to step out of your comfort zone
That’s the main thing: it can be taking a plane alone to go to your auntie one hour flight away, or it can be emigrating to Australia with nothing but your passport with you. If you feel thrilled about it, if it worries you but at the same time it feels like a challenge, if it is something new for you and it makes your independence and self-sufficiency grow…then you are on the right path! Everything that forces you to step out of your comfort zone (the place and mood where you feel like being in control of all the situations surrounding you, because you know how to deal with them) will help your growth, and discovering you can survive in a challenging environment will make you feel so good!
Don’t let life scare you!
2) You can take your time
Normally, traveling with someone is all about reaching compromises. And the first one you always have to make, is how to use your time while on holiday. This is nothing terrible, you do it all the time and it’s normal, but you always have to sacrifice a little bit of your time for the happiness of the whole group. If you are traveling alone, forget it! In my case, for example, this means I spent A LOT of time taking pictures! Normally I try to speed it up because I know there are other people waiting for me, but everyone who has a DSLR knows how long it takes sometimes to get the picture you want, exactly the way you want it. Well, being alone I could spend minutes or hours sitting in the same spot and taking the same picture, and no one would care about it. It is wonderful, and it gives you a whole new perspective over time and the way you can enjoy it when you have literally nothing else you have to do!
It doesn’t matter how much time I spent taking that picture
3) You have to do only what you really want to do
Again, this is all about not having to reach any compromise (except the ones you need to reach with yourself because it’s getting late or you are hungry). What do you really like to do while on holiday? Do you like getting up late and spending the whole day at the beach? No problem, if you don’t mind seeing anything apart from the seaside, who cares?! I personally don’t like visiting churches and enjoy so much hiking and seeing beautiful landscapes, so I spent many hours of 2 different days just walking on the cliffs in Lagos, following a slightly different itinerary, just because I loved the landscape there. Who cared about it, except for me?!
Lagos’ coastline was so attractive to me
4) You get to know yourself better
Strictly connected with the previous one, this reason is really important because we often take for granted we know ourselves. We are so used to be always with somebody that the compromises we often reach don’t feel like compromises anymore! And while on one hand this is really good, on the other it means we don’t really know what we like doing until we are totally alone. I am a shopping maniac when at home, and usually I like shopping also when I am abroad, but I realized the idea was not appealing anymore when I was alone. I just had a different perception over time, and I didn’t enjoy it without a friend. So I probably didn’t even step into a shop for all the time I was there!
5) Nothing is too expensive (nor too cheap)
Another problem you may occur in when traveling with friends is your budget, and the way you want to spend it. This problem seems to become bigger as the number of people in the group grows, doesn’t it? And, as obvious as it sounds, it becomes inconsistent when you are alone! I am an adaptable person who doesn’t mind sleeping in a cheap hostel with a lot of other unknown people, if this helps me saving money. And I like to spend the money saved in 2 main ways: food (I love going to local restaurants and trying local food) and activities (I like doing weird things like adventurous tours or things I can’t try anywhere else in the world, which are usually expensive). On my solo holidays I ate at the restaurant every day (another really nice thing I was not used to do on my own) and I spent “a lot” of money for a hiking tour on the cliffs, a panoramic cruise and similar activities, while I spent very few on my accommodation. A travel buddy could have had a problem with that!
A hiking tour out of common touristic paths
6) Eat everywhere, everything, every time you want!
Have you ever seen a single person eating alone at the restaurant? Not so often, right? I have the impression it is kind of a taboo for certain people, and instead I was very curious to try it. As I said before, food is one of the things I love most, especially when it is something typical I would not eat at home. So it seemed a pity going into a fast food when Portugal is famous for its good fish and the 365 ways of cooking bacalhau (codfish)! The first night, I sat at a restaurant alone and felt ashamed and observed, so I spent my dinner with the phone in my hands, calling people or checking Facebook. The day after I tried it again, and this time I enjoyed having a look around, trying to listen to others’ conversations in portuguese, thinking about the next thing I wanted to visit and basically minding my own business (I couldn’t even use my phone since there was no wifi!). And I really enjoyed it! Then, on the last day, wandering through the streets of Lisbon I found a restaurant that was showing a wonderful picture of a giant crab served on a plate. I don’t usually eat crab, lobster and crustaceans in general, firstly because they are expensive, but also because I am totally unable to eat them without using my fingers and getting completely dirty (and when I go to the restaurant I usually prefer avoiding a bad impression). In that moment, I realized I REALLY wanted to taste it and that I didn’t give a damn about what people could think of my inability at eating it! So I ordered it and…I enjoyed it so much! It was probably one of the best things I had ever eaten, and I spent the lunch laughing at myself for how dirty I was getting! ;)
Eating a crab can be really fun!
7) You get to really enjoy your own company
I think the whole point of traveling alone is that you pass through different phases: at first you feel weird about it, it’s fine (after all you are on your own also at home sometimes!) but you feel like something is missing; you see something beautiful and you feel like telling it to someone, something funny happens and you’d like to share it with a friend. Then you start doing your stuff: you stroll down a street, stop at a bar, enjoy a nice view, and you find something you like doing on your own. It could be anything, actually: maybe you discover you enjoy more visiting the city while listening to your music, or that you like sitting in a central hub and watching people pass, or (like me) you find yourself totally into taking pictures and thinking about what you are going to write on your blog when you are back. The point is, you realize that there is something you really love doing on your own! And you start enjoying the company of yourself. It’s just not the same thing that could happen at home: here you have nothing to do, no television, no computer, no friends to go out with, nothing…and when your brain realizes you are getting bored, it automatically starts doing something new, just to entertain itself.
Just me, myself & I!
8) There’s nothing better than being alone to meet new friends!
If the whole reason #7 doesn’t work for you and you are feeling terribly alone, don’t panic! There is literally nothing that works better than being alone to meet new people! Of course, this is not always true, but you can help the Fate by sleeping in the right hostel! Not only it will probably be crowded with young people from all over the world, but some of them will likely be on holiday alone as you are. Sometimes it takes a little courage to kick start a conversation, and it may be up to you doing so (boys are probably more used to it than girls but, hey, this is 21st century, we don’t have to wait for a man to talk to us anymore!). But this is part of the game, and in a while you’ll find yourself kind of comfortable with it (and you’ll be proud of yourself!).
Are you too shy to do so? Well, again, the hostel is the answer: before you book it, check if it organizes tours (95% of hostels do!) and join them all! It’s usually very easy to get to know people this way. And if nothing else worked out and you still feel so lonely you are about to cry (in which case I would advice you not to have a solo holiday anymore, dude!), there are so many organized tours out there and a lot of tools to find them (on top of all, the flyers you can find at hotels’ entrance and/or the list of nearby activities on TripAdvisor!). Just be open-minded, curious and remember that you are alone, you can do EVERYTHING YOU WANT!
Traveling alone does not mean being lonely
9) Enjoy the freedom of having NO PLAN!
When traveling alone you have to face the classic big question of any other holiday: to book or not to book? Every holiday has to pass through this decision: will you book hostels/flights/trains in advance and lose some of your freedom, or will you decide everything day by day? This is hard, I know. Personally, I think the best answer lies in the middle. You need to be very brave to solo traveling without booking a hostel, I see it, but why should you book it one week in advance? If you have the chance, try enjoying all the freedom this kind of holiday gives you. You can plan the first destination, think about a possible itinerary for your trip, book a hostel for a couple of nights and go there. What happens next is mystery, a thrilling mix between chance, fate and your own decisions! You may meet an interesting group of people and decide to join them, or even listen to a random conversation about a cool place and decide to go there. Why should you prevent yourself from this exciting amount of freedom by booking in advance all of your stay?
10) Going back home…
This is probably the most important reason of them all. Firstly because after a holiday alone you are going to feel somehow better. No matter how long you were away, no matter where you went, you’ll be feeling different due to reason #1: you’ve stepped out of your comfort zone, you tried something new, you probably have new friends and a lot of stupid adventures to tell your old ones…and you’ll feel more mature, because you’ve tested your skills and you have won the challenge. Never underestimate how powerful a growth in our self esteem can be!
Second, you’ll feel like you’ve done something special! OK, I know traveling alone is not as interesting as fighting against a tiger, but it is still something not everyone can do. It requires a bigger amount of courage and probably some stupidity, too, but why do people jump from cliffs or from airplanes? We are all looking for a way to make our lives incredible, even through little, stupid things like this.
10 good reasons for traveling alone
These are my 10 reasons why traveling alone is important and worth doing. Everyone has different reasons, though…what are yours? Are you a solo traveler and you feel like you found out the same things? Or everything I said is nonsense for you? Or maybe traveling alone is only a tiny thought at the borders of your mind, yet? Whoever you are, speak (write) your heart loud and…thank you for reading :)
nice suggestions.
there is quite a sense of freedom on one’s own.
happy trails….
Thank you Paul! You have a lovely blog :)