I am currently living in a tee pee with a lovely family in the sawtooth mountains, Idaho. I never would of experienced this if I traveled on a set plan with other people. It’s hard sometimes when you have no money and haven’t eaten for a while but the world looks after me.

Just take a risk and discover whats over the horizon.

Good luck fellow travellers

It’s definitely about self-discovery. We learn most about ourselves and the world when we travel solo and are faced with new places, cultures, challenges, people, events…

@Julie (and Lakshmi)- There are plenty of moments you want to share people with. You don’t want to be alone all the time! What’s the fun in that! I hope I didn’t give them impression!

@trang- great idea! A lot of people I’ve met have done that. They travel together for awhile then break up and then come back together. Because like Chistine just said, it’s easy to get into a little bubble.

If you’re on the backpacker trail, you’ll meet people instantly – registering at the hostel, sharing your room, in a suggested restaurant, on the beach… If you’re in rural Africa, crowds will follow you around because you’re such an oddity, and next thing you know you’ll be surrounded by most of the village. In big cities people will walk up to you and ask where you’re from. And you’ll make plans to meet up with people you’ve met on the road, further up. As for villagers and citizens of the lands you travel through, some will become lifelong friends, even if that friendship is limited to the occasional postcard exchange.

I love to travel on my own because it gives me the freedom to do what I want, when I want. The thing is – I rarely end up doing it alone!

You also get to learn more about yourself. Your success and failures are yours to enjoy and best of all, like you mentioned: FLEXIBILITY!

Cheers

Whew. I could spend the next hour talking about my solo vs. group preferences, but they boil down to this.

I used to be a tour director for an educational tourism country, which meant one thing: I led big groups around places and talked to them on a microphone from the front of the bus, which the vast majority of them appeared to hate. When I think about it, though, I’m amazed by some of the authentic moments of cultural contact I was able to create for and with them.

I eventually quit the job though because those moments were so rare and those moments are the main reason why I travel.

I agree with Lakshmi– though I sometimes find traveling with my husband maddening (mostly the packing and getting to the airport part), when I’m traveling alone I always find myself thinking, “I wish he was here so we could share this.” There’s nothing like having an experience or seeing something that blows your mind and having someone to talk with about it, though, as you say in the post, there are people everywhere– you just have to open yourself to them.

lakshmi