I’ve said several times recently that the end of the alphabet is difficult so, yes, we’re arriving at “y not?”. Y not indeed, as the waiter howled at my granny’s favourite restaurant. And I’m going to illustrate “y not?” with pictures of me living my best life having adventures!
Why travel solo? Why not? You don’t need a reason to, other than that you want to. I do think you should want to. If you’re going against your will, because someone else wants you to or because you think it’s something you should want, you’re probably not going to enjoy it. That goes double for solo travel. Solo travel is such a specialist kind of travel that there’s absolutely no point in doing it if you don’t want to. Maybe it wasn’t going to be solo and the circumstances changed – maybe your travelling companion’s plans had to change, because jobs and finances and life sometimes gets in the way – and you found yourself suddenly on your own, maybe that’s when you’d travel solo despite not wanting to. But even then, I’d move heaven and earth to find a replacement travel companion, I think. Solo travel can be life-changing but if it’s not something you actively want to do, you might well find it miserable and lonely.
Some points about solo vs shared travel – these may be good or bad depending on you. Solo, you have to do everything. Make all the decisions, hold onto the things, navigate your way around. That might be great if you’re the kind of person who relishes having complete control. On the other hand, if travel is scary, those might be exactly the sorts of things you want to delegate or at least share with someone else. But if you find yourself travelling solo, you may come to realise how capable and brave and independent you can be when you need to be, and that brings a lot of confidence.
So, independence, self-confidence, freedom, problem-solving – four concrete things you can get from travelling solo. Four transferable skills that you can potentially list on a CV or talk about in an interview. I’m a big fan of so-called “soft skills” and the places you can find them – I’m always going on about Girlguiding on your CV (leadership skills, event planning, first aid etc etc) but travel, especially solo travel, if you can find a way to incorporate it that doesn’t sound like ” I went on holiday!”, can definitely cover some career-friendly skills and abilities.
But you can travel without having to use it as an excuse for CV-padding. There’s nothing wrong with travel for its own sake or just because you want to. Make it a hobby, make it the thing you do to break up your work year, make it the thing you do so you’ve got something to put in the family round robin Christmas letter. Make it the thing you do with your girlfriends every year so that you don’t entirely lose touch as your adult life buries you all. Do it because you want the house to look like a treasure trove of things you’ve brought back from around the world.
Do it because you don’t want to die without having seen every continent or having visited the backdrop of your favourite film. Do it because you just want to sit out in the sun in January. Do it because you don’t need to justify it to anyone. Why should you travel? Why should you travel solo? Why not? If you’ve got the funds or the time for it – or you can get the funds and make the time for it – there’s no real reason at all not to. Maybe you’re going to have a gap year, see the entire world and then settle down to a 9-5 job and a mortgage and never leave your hometown again. You’ve been out there, you’ve seen it, you’ve done it. Maybe you’re going to do what I do and stretch your salary and annual leave to as many week-long trips as you can manage for as long as you can. Maybe you’re going to do as many all-inclusive trips as you can, enjoy the sun and the cocktails and the pool. Maybe you’re going to have the sort of adventures that leaves your body wrecked by the time you’re forty but you’ve had a good time getting there. Maybe you’re going to make your living out of travel – become a travel writer or a digital nomad or a foreign correspondent or teach English abroad, or be a holiday rep and spend your 20s and 30s partying at a resort, or use your specialist skills as a sailing skipper in the Med or or or. There are so many ways to travel, so many reasons to travel.
Ok, for the sake of it, let’s talk about why not. Because it’s dangerous. Didn’t we cover this, many times over? There’s so much you can do to keep yourself safe and really, you’re not in much more danger somewhere else than you might be at home. Because it’s expensive. You can always earn more money – I’ve literally just given you a list of jobs you can do while travelling. Because we don’t like foreigners. Ah, you’re probably reading the sort of newspapers that don’t cross my house’s threshold and you definitely need to travel because you need to learn a few things about people from other countries and cultures. Because you don’t have time. Ok, it’s not so easy to just make time. But travelling your own country is still travel and you can do that in weekends, or whatever gaps you surely must have at some point between shifts. You can still hop on a plane for an hour or two for a long weekend somewhere not far away. Little and often is still a lot of travel and little and occasionally is still travel. Because you have commitments – children, parents, jobs, clubs, volunteer positions. Yeah, I’ll give you that one too. But again, you can squeeze in a few days here and there if you really want to. Long-haul long-term travel is not the only kind of travel. It’s certainly not my kind of travel – between work and Guiding, I’m not overwhelmed with spare time and I’m certainly not overwhelmed with money so I do little and semi-often.
So, to come back to my first point: you should travel because you want to. There are so many reasons that you don’t even need a reason and for every reason not to, there’s a counter-reason why you should.