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Top 5 ups and downs of solo travel
#travel #solotravel #inspiration #experience #challenge
When you narrow down your focus, you have a clearer shot.
My faithful readers and fellow solo travelers – how is your trip planning going? I’ve kicked this year off not with the best situations and news. However, I did connect with a group of mindful young and inspiring people, which has helped me pull through and persevere. Unfortunately, I will not be traveling in January, but I am already planning for two months ahead, with concrete new destinations to report from.
The point of this huge inspirational paragraph is only to motivate you to stand tall in the face of peril – even when things don’t immediately work out as you hoped they would. After all, many friends have told me the following:
If the year has started so terribly, it will most certainly turn out to flow and end as one of the best ones so far.
Anyways, I know some of you have had second thoughts on solo travel, and would like to hear more about concrete cases of good and bad situations that follow. The point of this intro is to dive directly into the top five ups and downs of solo travel. Remember, some of these are not technically (dis)advantages – in most cases, it’s all up to our own personal point of view. But they most certainly can make us enjoy or hate our journey.
Ups
- No one to look after
This one is quite self-explanatory, also one of my main reasons for traveling alone. If it’s only me, I never have to look back and check if the whole group is there – I am the whole group! This also means no potty breaks every 30 minutes and less argument in choosing where and what to eat. Maybe it sounds cruel, but try it and let me know if I was incorrect about anything.
- You can stay alone or find companionship
People usually fail to see this as an upside. If you are traveling alone, you can choose to stay that way, but when you’re with someone else – you can’t. If you decide to socialize, maybe the first group of people will not be glad to accept you, but another one will.
- Your skillset grows (plus, you become a master planner)
I want to hear that someone’s found psychological research on this topic. I’ve noticed it on myself, and how much I’ve grown every time I traveled without companionship. The sense of responsibility and accountability is higher when there is no one to lean onto. Having to think for yourself, days or even weeks ahead, in extraordinary conditions – now doesn’t that force us to plan everything with more precision? On multiple occasions, it happened to me to stay just under the budgeted amount of money, at the end of my trip. Why? Precise planning, of course!
Just be careful of one pitfall: If you are the one with the highest sense of accountability, everyone will want to lean on you. Don’t overdevelop it!
- Your experience is unique
I’ve explored a new city on my own last year. I will not say which one, but it will be my TOP 1, if I ever make a TOP 10 travel disappointments. According to everyone who’s ever used a passport to travel, it is the most original, beautiful, fascinating etc. etc. city on Earth. Then there’s a whole earthful of cities, and then the runner-up. My experience – the city is not one bit worth visiting, under any circumstances, as it is ridiculously overpriced, despite the fact it offers absolutely NOTHING. Plus, the food in any restaurant is disgusting.
Had I traveled there with anyone, statistically, they would be enamored with the city, and I would be stuck with this faulty feeling of liking it.
Remember how I said I hated Hong Kong while visiting, but decided I actually love it and need to visit it again? This is what unique experience looks like. Sometimes it gets clouded from what you hear others say, rather than what you perceive with your own set of senses.
- Suddenly everyone wants to travel with you
Boundaries. Humans have issues with them. Have you ever noticed that, once you say you are completely done, with something, everyone will want to do it only with you, and nobody else? My case exactly. Ever since I traveled alone for the first time, I have barely ever been able to book a solo trip. The reason? I don’t think even the people who decided to voyage with me know that.
You travel alone for the first time. Now everyone is surprised with how you managed to do it, how you’ve grown as a person, how fun you are to be around. And no, they were not able to see these traits earlier. The moment you tell everyone you’ll never invite companions to your journeys, everyone will rush to travel with alongside you. I guess that’s the cure for not being able to find travel buddies – going on a solo adventure!
Downs
- Hotel policies
I have to be brutally honest with this one. It ruins the conception of adventure.
So, you made a huge life decision to travel alone. You’ve decided to muster up all your bravery and go for a solo adventure. Ahead of that, you did ask about 120 people to tag along, but no one accepted (true story, this exact situation happened to me). Now, you have to sleep somewhere, right? You will go to a hotel that has an empty room, obviously.
Bottom line – the hotel would be earning zero money from an empty room, and then you come in to the rescue.
Sane human logic: This person has been so brave to leave their comfort zone without anyone else, for the reason of putting money into our pocket. This person is saving our budget! Let’s reward them with a 20% discount!
Hotel logic: Look at this poor do*c*ebag, unable to find anyone to travel with. And now, we have an empty room we’re not making money off of, but it’s a shame to give it at 100% of its price to someone who’s alone. Let’s charge them extra 50% for being lame and not finding anyone to tag along!
- This kind of behavior from hotels’ management has to stop – it is preventing brave human individuals with insufficient financial assets from traveling and fulfilling their dreams. Join me in advocating against these snobbish policies that do not work in 21st Century A.D.
- One pair of eyes oversees everything
Honestly, this is not even a downside, and let me tell you why. When you are alone on the road, you are the only one in charge of your own trip – if you overlook to bring a toothbrush, no one will remind you. If you don’t know where you put your passport, no one will know it for you. Bright side – this gives you a stronger sense of responsibility, and you simply start always knowing what you have and where it is.
Technically, traveling with someone should mean another set of eyes will see better. In most cases, for an inexplicable reason, this is where things get lost. Probably due to the fact that responsibility and reliability become looser, knowing you have someone to lean onto.
- What if you feel unwell or sick?
That’s a bummer! If you’re with someone, they can go to the pharmacy, get you medicine, take over the responsibility of following through with the rest of your common trip. When you’re alone in this situation, you have to build resilience. It’s not the best way, but in the end, you will become a better version of yourself.
- People may find you to be strange
This is not a problem per se. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – one of my favorite quotes (and I use it for much more than just beauty). However, if you are traveling solo, and you wish to meet a group of people, they might be put off by the fact you are unaccompanied. This is another thing we should advocate for – teach and raise children better, so that once they are adults, they don’t instantaneously have prejudice!
- You need to make all the preparations yourself
The first instance is left for the end. When you travel with someone, you have to agree on things to see, do, eat etc. When you’re buying the tickets – it’s one extra click to buy two, three or more tickets, in comparison to only one. When booking a room, it’s just extra names to write down (if needed). Meaning the extra effort for additional people is ridiculously low. Then, of course, taxis will be cheaper, finding your way will be easier with more people, etc.
On the other hand, going alone provides more flexibility. Remember my first day in Malta? I was about to see a part of Valetta and thought that was it for the day. Upon finishing going around all of Valetta and Floriana, I went back to Sliema, St Julian’s and finished seeing everything by 5 PM. Multiple people would be bound to slow me down and create difficulties in reprogramming the rest of the day. Take it as a blessing in disguise.
Yesterday, I wrote this article, and absolutely hated it. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Today, I read it again, did some corrections, and now I absolutely love it. To reiterate to the motivational intro, even one days when we are down, we need to find something to help us push through. Even if it means we’ll leave something good to be finished the next day. Remember that when going through uneasy times.
I’ve been to some amazing destinations in the past 365 days – Paris, Disneyland Paris, Sarajevo, Aya Napa, Jordan (Amman, Wadi Rum, Petra, Jerash, The Dead Sea), Nuremberg, Graz, Vrnjacka Banja, and a number of others I can’t even remember right off the bat. Which one would you like to hear about in my following post, next Tuesday? Vote in the comments below.
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