What actually happens when you travel alone for the first time
Taha
· 7 min read
I’m going to skip the part where I tell you solo travel changed my life, because you’ve read that piece a hundred times and it didn’t make you book the flight.
Here’s what actually happens.
Day one: you feel like an idiot
You arrive. You don’t know where you’re going. The hostel is harder to find than Google Maps suggested. You check in, put your bag down, and sit on your bunk and think: why didn’t I just come with someone?
This is completely normal. It passes. Usually by day two.
The loneliness is real but it isn’t what you think
The loneliness of solo travel isn’t the sad, empty kind. It’s more like… quiet. You notice things you wouldn’t notice if you were talking to someone. You make decisions faster because there’s nobody to consult. You eat when you want to eat, walk where you want to walk, stay somewhere longer than planned because you’re not ready to leave.
There’s a dinner alone moment that everyone has. You’re sitting at a table for one, and other people are in groups, and you feel slightly conspicuous. Then you realise nobody is looking at you. They’re talking to each other. You order the thing you wanted to order, and you read your book, and it’s fine.
The conversations you wouldn’t have had otherwise
Solo travellers talk to other solo travellers. You don’t have the buffer of your group, so you say yes to things — to the person in the hostel kitchen who asks if you want to see the viewpoint, to the walking tour, to sharing a table.
Some of those conversations go nowhere. Some of them last all day. A few of them — rarely, but it happens — become something that stays with you.
What it changes
I don’t want to overstate it. Solo travel doesn’t fix you. It doesn’t cure anxiety or loneliness or any of the things people suggest it will.
What it does is give you a data point. You went somewhere alone, you didn’t know anyone, and you managed. More than managed. That data point is useful.
The destinations in this piece: Lisbon, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and one very rainy week in Edinburgh.