Traveling Alone
Solo travel can be one of the most invigorating experiences, and be one of the best investments you can make in yourself. I’ve spent quite a substantial amount of time on my own on the road, and it certainly presents its own challenges but the rewards far surpass these.
My first piece of advice when traveling alone is to have a pretty rigorous plan. This will help keep you safe because you can let people know where you are at all times, but it also means that you always have somewhere to look forward. A risk when traveling alone is that you’re less motivated to get out and see things, having a plan will mean that there’s always something to do, and you won’t feel you lack someone else pulling you around or suggesting locations to see.
Having said that, a great benefit of traveling alone for me has been the time for self-reflection and really appreciating and taking in where I am at any given moment. Not having someone to be distracted by means I notice more of what I’m seeing, and appreciate things in a different way. I find that I immerse myself in a local culture or environment much better when I don’t have anyone else to be concerned about or social with.
You meet people much easier in places like hostels when you’re traveling alone as well. People are more likely to include you in their social circles when it looks as though you’re there on your own – one of the great benefits of hostel culture.
A lot of the safety concerns on traveling alone, particularly if you’re female, go without saying, so I won’t get into them here. Just be cautious and don’t step too far out of your comfort zone when you’re alone.
Otherwise, I’d say make sure you journal and take lots of selfies of you in all the great places you travel to!
Documenting Your Travels
An important part of travel that is far too often overlooked is documenting the memories you make.
It's instinctual for most of us to document our time traveling with photographs, but what happens to them once we're home? All too often mine sit on a memory card only to be forgotten until the next trip comes along.
Social media has helped, in the sense that we are now good and trained at uploading memories instantaneously. These aren't comprehensive memory safe's though, only showing a day or a moment where in years to come you'll wish you remembered more than a selfie and a smart caption.
My favourite way is journaling and I find it's a relatively easy habit to get yourself into when you're traveling, much easier than when at home. I make sure to take time each day to write, even just in list form, where we went and what we saw. For the wordsmiths amongst us you may like to write a more comprehensive account, but you'll be amazed at how much memory recall you can have from even just reading the name of a place or cafe you visited.
If printing out photos isn't your thing, I'd highly recommend picking your favourite photos as you go and then having them printed into a book when you get home. We only started doing this recently, and I'm trying to organise myself into doing the same for some old trips too - there are loads of companies online that will bind your memories together and send you a gorgeous coffee table book of your adventure. This is great for showing friends and family as well as being a precious keepsake for yourself.