Maybe you’ve been mulling over your dream trip for a while, but you can’t seem to match your dates with your friends’. Or maybe they’re not as excited about it as you are. Or maybe you’re open to other ideas, but it seems impossible to agree on a destination. If you continue like this, it’ll probably take years until you achieve it. If you ever achieve it. Either you take action, or there will come a time when it’ll be too late. Have you ever considered traveling alone? If you haven’t thought about it yet, your first answer to this question might be, “No, I don’t want to travel alone because I’ll end up bored or feeling too lonely.” If you’re thinking about that, read on.
What are you really afraid of?
You probably haven’t yet taken the plunge into traveling alone due to several fears
1. Fear of what people will say
One of the main barriers is often the image we present to people who know us: we tend to believe that traveling alone is synonymous with defeat and personal failure. If you think society marginalizes those who have decided to travel, live, or go it alone, use your empathy and put yourself in the shoes of the people around you. What would you think if you’d been dreaming of traveling to India for years but couldn’t find a companion, and one day you found out that an acquaintance of yours had gone alone, made tons of friends there, and was already saving up to return next year? Would you feel sorry for him or, on the contrary, a little envious? As I imagine your response, I can only remind you that what people say is one thing, and what they think is another. That’s how social pressure works. If you travel alone, many people will admire your courage and envy your freedom. Even if they say otherwise.
2. Fear that something bad will happen to you
Those moments when you’ll be truly alone are the safest: in the tranquility of your room, sitting on a train, or waiting in an airport. On other occasions, if you take certain precautions, you won’t have any more difficulties than you would in the city or town where you live. Think about it: When you leave your home to go somewhere, do you usually run into any problems? Now imagine that instead of being you, you’re from another country, heading to the same place along the same route. Would you encounter any new setbacks just because you’re a foreigner? Of course not. Other countries aren’t necessarily more dangerous. Traveling alone in Spain is just as dangerous as traveling alone in any other country. If you do your research beforehand and avoid tricky places, you shouldn’t have any problems. If I compare my city with the safety I’ve experienced while traveling to certain places in Asia, I’d be scared even to go buy bread. The fear of something bad happening to you is an imaginary fear that’s usually not based on your past experiences but on your beliefs. In reality, what worries you isn’t the possibility of something bad happening to you. You simply believe you’re incapable of being alone.
3. Fear of not knowing how to cope
We humans have a habit of punishing ourselves a lot and rewarding ourselves little. When we have to step out of our comfort zone, we only see problems and catastrophes instead of opportunities and challenges. But the truth is, once we step out of that zone, people smarten up a lot more than you think. And that includes you. Humans unconsciously seek resources from everywhere; just ask the people who survived two weeks trapped in the rubble of an earthquake. I propose an exercise: think for a moment about the good or interesting things you’ve experienced in your life, such as a new job, a date with your crush, the birth of a child, or starting your own business. Were you nervous? Good things are always accompanied by fear because there’s the possibility of failure , and the body uses that fear to give us the energy to prevent failure. The fear of failure is what gives people the motivation to avoid it. That same energy will give you the strength to make yourself understood by the locals even if you don’t speak their language or to find a place to stay at 3 a.m. And if you can’t find one, remember that today is not like it was 40 years ago: almost anywhere you’ll find someone who speaks a little English, a police officer who can help you, or a place with internet access to communicate.
You can’t decide whether you get nervous or not, but you can decide how you use the energy your nerves give you. Use it to keep moving.
4. Fear of feeling alone
I want you to be clear about one thing: feeling lonely is not the same as being alone. If you were to find yourself in the middle of a city and everyone around you was in pairs or groups, you’d have real reasons to feel lonely. But that’s never the case, so you’ll leave that feeling of loneliness behind the moment you leave your place of stay in the morning. Traveling as a couple or in a group can be much lonelier than traveling alone. It practically forces you to constantly interact with your companions so you don’t feel like you’re leaving them out. In that situation, it’s perfectly possible to return from your trip without having met anyone. But what many people don’t realize is that, even though they start alone, they’ll rarely be that way. When you find yourself alone, say in the middle of Bangkok, you’ll find yourself absorbing everything around you, needing to talk to people, socialize, and communicate. No matter how introverted you are. Surely there are things you hate doing alone, like having dinner or going to the movies, and others that don’t cause you anxiety or that you even enjoy, like going for walks or visiting museums. The key is to try to do more things from the second category than the first; this way, you’ll notice the loneliness less.
Since the fear of feeling alone is the only one of the four that I consider to have real, rather than imaginary, foundations, let’s look at some ways to make friends on your journey.
How to meet people while traveling alone
First, I’m going to bust a myth: meeting people alone, especially abroad, is much easier than meeting others. And not just because of you, but because of the people around you.
People have an easier time approaching you when you’re alone because you’re much more approachable. The larger a group is, the more embarrassed or afraid we are to approach it. So, please, if someone comes to talk to you, don’t give them a dirty look.
When someone finds out you’re alone, they worry more about you. This is due to your apparent lack of protection. They’ll treat you better, show more interest in you, and invite you to meet their friends. It makes it easier to meet people.
Conversations are much deeper. When you’re alone, a simple “Where are you going?” sitting at the train station can become a traveling companion and a lifelong friendship. That’s because conversations with people we think we’ll never see again are much deeper than those with friends. The belief that the information you exchange will never reach home frees you to open your heart more.
En realidad, es tan fácil conocer gente viajando solo que a menudo me he descubierto a mí mismo intentando huir de los demás
Angel’s note: This is completely true. It’s so easy to meet people in a hostel that on days when I had to write a post, I was forced to “escape” to a nearby cafe to avoid getting involved.
Why people will want to know you
Surely your mother, like mine, told you never to talk to strangers. I have to tell you that certain popular sayings like this, even if well-intentioned, have done quite a bit of damage to the social development of many people.
You may subconsciously believe that approaching a stranger to talk will upset them, when the reality is exactly the opposite. While someone may not want to talk to you because they’ve had a bad day, I’d bet you at dinner that you’ll hardly upset them for two reasons:
We almost always want to meet people in our same circumstances. We’re like humans: we like things that are similar to us. When you backpack around the world, you meet travelers with a similar outlook on lif, and who have likely decided to travel alone for the same reasons as you.
To the locals, you’re something out of the ordinary. You probably don’t want to meet your neighbor as much as you would a person from another country who can inspire you with their interest and make you see your usual surroundings differently.
However, people are often hesitant to approach a stranger. Most advice you’ll find tells you to start with a comment about the weather or ask for directions. I completely disagree: people will realize you were hiding your true intentions, and it will be harder to steer the conversation where you want to go. Furthermore, being honest at the beginning of any encounter can greatly influence the values on which that relationship will be based.
