Striking out alone

There are millions of people who say they’d love to travel, if only they had somebody to go with.

I used to be one of them, until I plucked up the courage to go it alone. Years of being married and having an automatic companion for holidays had made it easy. Then suddenly I was alone, and the world was big and scary. But there was nothing to stay at home for, either. And with a lonely Christmas looming, I took the plunge and booked a single place on a trip to Vietnam.

Trip by trip, year by year, I became a semi-reluctant expert in solo travel. Sometimes joining a tour group to enjoy the companionship of strangers, and sometimes journeying alone.

Of course it’s hard, especially the first few times. Even now there’s often a moment where loneliness strikes, or self-pity sets in as I contemplate yet another supper for one. Another sunset and nobody to watch it with, the panic of a missed flight with nobody to help figure it out, or a laugh of delight that’s too quiet because, well, who wants to be the mad woman laughing by herself?

While the days are fine, armed with a guidebook and something delicious from a bakery, dinners for one can be appalling. Since room service or a supermarket snack feel like failure, I hit the streets. Then I laugh at myself as I struggle to actually enter somewhere. I’ll pause outside a restaurant and decide it’s too pricy. A café that looks too empty, or a bar that sounds too raucous. In Tel Aviv I dithered my way up and down one street so often that a hooker on the corner started to curse at me, convinced I was muscling into her territory.

But gradually you grow more confident, and the heady delight of waking up in a new city with everything waiting to be discovered is a wonderful, exhilarating thrill. After three days in Hong Kong once, I must have looked so comfortable there that tourists were stopping me to ask for directions!

Now after weeks of Covid virus isolation, I know I’d rather be alone on the road than endlessly alone at home. I hope that if you’ve also held yourself back through that very real fear of striking out alone, you’ll pick a trip, pack a bag, and shove aside your worries about loneliness or the discomfort of going solo in a world full of couples, families or friends.

Because the thing is, you won’t be alone. Solo travel is no longer unusual, and the world is full of travellers with stories to tell. And the casual conversations or short-term friendships you strike up are gems that rarely happen when you’re with a partner. One of my nicest days in Canada was when I got chatting to a man at the theatre one evening. A tour guide, it turned out, and the next day we met again so he could drive me to a remote area where the First Nation people lived.

Did I ever take it for granted, that ability to travel? To fly to another country where the immigration queue is the only barrier to a new land waiting to be explored?

Besides, the death of two life partners has shown me that life is essentially a solitary occupation. Maybe you’ll be fortunate enough to walk its path with someone for many wonderful years, and you’ll think they’ll always be there. But if one day you’re left alone, bereft and floundering, I hope you’ll eventually find yourself again, and realise you still have a life to lead.

So be brave, be bold, and strike out alone out. Be scared, if you like. Most of us are, somewhere deep inside.

Top Tips:

If solo travel is new for you, start gently by joining a group. It provides instant companionship and takes care of all the transport and accommodation logistics. There’s always the faint chance that you’ll be travelling with an oddball bunch of misfits, but usually everyone rubs along just fine. Lots of people end up making friends who become regular travel companions for years.

In Vietnam my main companions were two septuagenarian widows. The ladies and I caught rickshaws to Saigon opera house for an evening of Tchaikovsky, and bunked off a group trip to a noodle bar to search for chips and cheesecake.

There’s often a heavy female skew on these trips, since women who become single again yearn to rediscover themselves, while re-singled men seem happy to explore no further than the Netflix Channel. (You may object to that stereotyping, but only if you're male!)

It’s also physically safer to be with others, and if anything goes wrong you have a guide who knows the country, the language, and how to get help.

I often travel with these two companies, which have a wide variety of tours to numerous countries: www.explore.co.uk and www.exodus.co.uk. Many other companies specialise in focused activities, like learning Spanish in Andalucia, cooking in Italy, or cycling almost anywhere, so this could be a great way to expand your hobbies.

The upside of adventuring entirely on your own is that you can be as flexible as you like with dates, costs and destinations, and how long to spend in each location. Putting a trip together yourself is easier if you choose somewhere where English is spoken and has a reputation for safety. A tour around Canada, for example, is a breeze, with all the internal transport bookable online.

The local website www.travelstart.co.za is great for booking flights, and searchable by price and duration of the journey. For booking accommodation try www.booking.com. It has many of the same places that you’ll find on Airbnb, but I prefer the booking terms that Booking.com offers.

Here are the links to some stories from my solo trips to give you some inspiration: Vietnam, Bangkok, (which does attract male solo travellers...) and Bolivia.