Travel Alone. You Won’t Regret It.

I’m not that kind of person that takes pleasure in telling people what they should or shouldn’t do. It’s a free world, everyone is unique with vast differences in interests, and social media influencers are already spreading gospels of worthless junk that crowds blindly follow.

I will, however, make an exception to be that one person who urges you to travel alone at some point in your life, especially if you haven’t done so.

Before I go off, I do need to clarify that traveling alone is not glamorous. It could be, depending on your lifestyle, but the nature of it isn’t. Spending consistently long periods of quality time by yourself can be difficult, especially when you start craving company while having a nice cup of melange on a terrace with a nice view. The feeling is completely valid. Many friends mistake me for spending my time traveling sipping champagne off of a yacht or something when I travel, but that’s galaxies far from it.

There are a lot of quiet, uncomfortable moments while listening to your body, struggling to speak the local language to get by, and drowning in your endless train of internal thoughts (which can be dangerous and agonizing) as you recall and reflect on memories, conversations, ideas, or fantasies. Your attention, normally turned outward, now turns inward as you inspect your multi-faceted self. Your desires, your needs. What you could have done or said before to prevent a past mistake. Your worries and your dreams. What you love and are embarrassed about yourself. Sometimes you hate what you see in yourself, so much so it makes you cringe. But that’s when the real growth starts.

Another hard truth about solo travel is you are your own liability and master of your independence. You are your own CEO, travel itinerary keeper and planner, parent, lifeline, and even nurse. If you miss your 6am alarm to catch the 7:30am RailJet train from München to Prague, you’re screwed. If you forget to keep your fanny pack directly in front of your vagina at Barcelona Sants and get mugged, you’re double screwed. Lost your passport on a drunken night out? Infinitely, royally screwed.

During my stay at a cabin in Traunkirchen, Austria, I got sick with a fever. The nearest grocery story and pharmacy was a 40 minute walk away, the Airbnb hosts were out, and I felt too sheepish to text them on WhatsApp to ask for help (honestly, I should have). While struggling with an imminent puking feeling, I pulled myself together to make myself a light vegetable curry with purple rice, cutting vegetables at the pace of a sloth on a shitty ceramic plate with a table knife. Not to mention this was all done in a less than ideal kitchen scenario where there was only one stove top in the cabin, and there were dead bugs on some of the plates provided. I had to wash the vegetables separately in the sink of the bathroom, which, by the way, is separate from the cabin, a few stone steps away in the main house. Thanks to these wonderful limitations, what should have taken 35 minutes took me nearly two hours. After making myself this meal and some ginger tea sans Advil, my fever broke two hours later. I still look back at this miracle of an accomplishment with slight disbelief because of how fucking horrible I had felt at the time, and yet my unrelenting determination dragged me to achieve the near impossible. My Everest, you could say.

In this current leg of my travels across central Europe, I’ve spent several days without speaking to or meeting anyone, particularly during those few days I spent in Salzburg. Silence has been my constant companion, but it was also just a canvas. Limited roaming data also forced me to give up doomscrolling while on public transport; and so, rather than looking down while on the regional bus, I was looking out — out into a world of the most luscious shades of green I’ve ever seen in my life, dotted with a plethora of soft wildflowers, a visual therapy of sorts for my eyes after months of being glued to my computer screen pumping out movie and infographic posters and short video assignments for classes. You think to yourself as you reconnect with nature: What a wonderful world. Truly.

The minimal disturbance in the me, myself and I equation hyper-heightens all my five senses. I see, hear, taste, and smell things in a way I wouldn’t have if I were traveling with friends. Mind you, this isn’t to say I don’t enjoy being around people at all. But if you were wanted to soak in the atmosphere and personality of place, frolicking solo is certainly the way to do it. You pay more attention to little things you’d otherwise easily miss if for example, you were exploring Malasaña with a friend while having an intense debate on who makes the best tortilla classica in Madrid (answer: Casa Dani with the runny, creamy filling); in this circumstance, you’d probably miss the quirky, pixelated art of Stewy on a building façade, the fragrant smell of jamon iberico freshly trimmed off the leg in Degustación R. Garcia. Or just even stopping to listen to the rollercoaster speed at which Madrileños speak to one another, the way they colorfully roll their ‘r’s and how the ‘th’ sounds contrast deep vowels.

Perhaps, too, I just enjoy observing the everyday life around me because as a creative, I’m always on the hunt for inspiration. And a huge part of being creative requires being not creative and to simply go out, whether it means people watching, doing sports, or traveling. It’s so fascinating when people tell you where their ideas come from. A former schoolmate recalled incubating a project while watching anime. One got his from sex. Another from her time in San Sebastián because she loved it so much. I paired a set of complimentary colors I needed for a project based on a raspberry soda drink from Miró Manufactura in Zürich.

I’ve learned many things about myself when I wander for long periods of time alone and have even grown to appreciate the gift of spontaneity. In fact, some of the best travel experiences are never planned. Last weekend in Vienna, what was supposed to be just a stay-in-bed kind of night turned into an impromptu participation in trivia night at the hostel bar, which then turned into a group outing to Strandbar Hermann along the Danube, followed by one of the most wack silent disco nights I’ve had with a TV show producer from New York, student from Melbourne, and a lawyer from Stockholm.

Life taught me some of the harshest lessons on heartbreak while abroad, too. After months of genuine feelings professed to each other, I’ve come to learn the future is can never be guaranteed, much like a coin toss. What he passionately wrote in a break up letter didn’t even last after three months, and now it’s just a frozen time capsule. It carries meaning that no longer applies to the present.

Friends have praised me for my willingness to travel solo. It’s hard to tell if those praises stem from admiration or jealousy. Maybe both. But there’s absolutely no reason to bring out the green-eyed monster here. I truly believe life is too short to wait on your friends to do something or go somewhere fun and worthwhile. Jorja Smith is playing at the Stadtpark Open Air in Hamburg and all your friends are working that night? Go for it. Found that hole-in-the-wall shop selling fried pizza and no one else is in the mood for greasy guilty pleasure like you? Prego, a presto. Beautiful day out and you haven’t made any friends at the hostel you’re staying at? You traveled here for a reason; there’s got to be something out there for you if you choose to venture out and seize the day. It’s really as simple as the Nike Just Do it mentality.

Even in Madrid where I’m currently based, I find time to entertain myself when I have no concrete plans (granted there were very few opportunities like this during my Masters, so I was extremely lucky if I had a day like this at all). It was during days like like this where I came across my favorite magazine shop/cocktail bar in La Latina and where I finally found a shop that sold sweet corn arepa flour (not the standard one from Pan!) exported from Colombia. You simply never know what’s out there unless you yank yourself out (weather permitting, or just bring an umbrella).

Those who know how to enjoy time alone will always be able to find happiness anywhere. In these moments, yes, we’ll be alone, but it’s not the same as being lonely. In fact, I’d like to argue that alone is a state of being, but loneliness is just a feeling. As a creative and a seasoned expat who has lived in several countries, it is true, I am often alone. But in these past few years, I can confidently say that I have never truly felt lonely.

So what am I saying here, exactly? There’s an amazing world out there. Sure, with the wars, diminishing women’s basic reproductive rights, et al, it’s ugly sometimes. But if we’re too hesitant to venture beyond what we see, how will we get to experience the brilliant things that await us, both the good and the bad, riddled with life lessons and moments of self-discovery and resilience that we didn’t know we needed? Solo traveling, I believe, is the answer to reach the full range of what constitutes the rich life experience that makes us human.

As the Austrian Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”