What I’ve Learned From Solo Travel

Working in Australia, backpacking through Europe, road tripping across America… These are just a few of my solo adventures so far.

Solo traveling is unlike anything I have ever experienced in my short lifetime.

All of the adventures mentioned above are things I have done in the past year. And let me tell you, this past year has hands down been the greatest and most fulfilling year of my entire 25 laps around the sun so far.

I know every person is different and has different experiences when traveling, but this is just a glimpse through my eyes of what I have personally seen in my own solo travels. I have learned so much about myself through solo traveling, the good and the bad. I’ve discovered new, beautiful sides of myself, but I’ve also discovered things about myself that struggle with and need to work on.

Australia

Last February, I knew my soul was craving an adventure, so I booked a flight across the world to Australia. This was my first ever international solo adventure. Yall, I was terrified (you can read about that struggle here). Even though I was scared, and I was going to another country with no phone plan and I was gonna to be living in the middle of the woods with no service whatsoever and I had no idea what that month would entail, I still boarded that plane. And those 30 days in Australia were some of the greatest of my entire life. I came back to the States a new person with a new perspective on life.

That trip helped me discover so much about myself. I discovered that I am a heck-ton more skilled at directions than I ever thought! Since I didn’t have a phone plan, I wasn’t able to rely on good ole Google Maps to get me everywhere I needed to go (this was before I knew you could download offline maps…). I had to rely on myself and my own directional skills (and a few paper maps I picked up at a visitor’s desk). I only got lost about 35 times, but I always found where I was supposed to go! This is a skill that has helped me immensely since then when learning my way around a new city or not getting lost on a backpacking trip! Learning to rely on yourself and not technology is an invaluable skill that we all should learn at some points in our lives.

In Australia, I also learned that I had been (subconsciously) suppressing a deep wanderlust in my soul. I had honestly never explored that side of myself enough to understand how much my soul literally craves travel and adventure. As I was in Australia, working on a permaculture project in the middle of the Otway National Forest, loving every second of it, I was already planning my next adventure! Backpacking Europe had always been in the back of my mind, but in that month in Australia, my soul was set on fire and I told myself that I was going to do it. No questions asked. I would finally get the courage to book that one-way plane ticket!

Australia also gave me a new perspective on life. A desire to live a simpler life. Like I said earlier, I was living in the middle of the woods with no internet or service whatsoever. And I loved every second of it. The family that I was staying with and the other two backpackers living there became my little travel family. We spent every night sitting by the fire playing music together, or camping, or watching movies, or sitting in the hot tub that was wayyy too small for five grown adults! I realized that my life back at home was constantly surrounded by unnecessary distractions and my soul was craving a simpler life. Which is partially where my desire to convert my car and live on the road originated.

Australia taught me so much about myself and it still to this day holds some of my fondest memories of my entire life. You can read more about that trip here!

Europe

A year later, I brought another dream of mine to life. I booked a one-way flight to Europe and packed up my backpack. I was planning on visiting nine countries in nine months (subject to change since my plans changed almost daily!). However, I was on day 66 when the whole world turned upside down due to COVID-19 and I heartbreakingly had to cut my trip short.

Even in those short 66 days, though, my life was changed.

These are some of the main things I took away from that trip:

Independence

Unless you have some fancy shmancy travel agent planning your trip for you, your trip rests on your shoulders alone. You have to figure out where you want to go; you have to figure out how to get from point A to point B; you have to learn the language enough to be able to get around…

I cannot even count the amount of times I have been in a foreign country by myself and had literally no idea where I was going or how I was supposed to get there, and I had to figure it out. I’ve had to figure out how to get around on trains, buses, ferries, and subways. And I’m here to tell you that it’s not easy. Being lost in a foreign country where you don’t know the language and you don’t know how the public transport works, is hands down, one of the most stressful things I’ve ever experienced. And I’ve experienced it over and over and over again. There have been many tears cried, many phone calls to mom, and many desires just to be back home in the comforts of my bed. But after allowing myself a little time feel the overwhelming stress and frustration, I’ve had to pull myself out of it and keep going. And from that, the experiences that I’ve had are absolutely incomparable.

When you are traveling alone, you are the one who has to do the research on the best attractions to visit, the best places to eat, the most reasonably priced accommodations, and every single other thing that goes into planning a trip. I have spent hours doing research on how to save money while traveling, how to find the cheapest flights, how to experience cities not as a tourist, what the best things are to do off the beaten path…and this research has made my travels better by a million times. And I did it all on my own (with moral support from multiple sources!).

Traveling alone also helps you to be okay with doing things on your own. Since I stayed with locals, or at hostels so often, most of the time, I had people to do things with. I’d find people to go explore cities with, or to go out for lunch or coffee, or people to ride the train with. However, there were equally as many times when my hosts had to go to work, or no one from the hostel wanted to go to the same destination as me. And I had to learn to be okay with that and not let the presence or absence of other people keep me from doing things I wanted to do. There were lots of days that I explored big cities all on my own (and spent hours of that day setting up my tripod ten different angles to get the perfect picture) and those were honestly some of my favorite days. When traveling with other people, especially people you don’t know very well, it can sometimes be a constant battle of trying to make sure everyone is happy and getting to do what they want. However, when riding solo, you get to see (or not see) whatever you want. If you want to sit at the Giardino degli aranci in Rome for four hours just listening to the street musicians and looking out at the breathtaking city, you absolutely can, which is exactly what I did because that was my favorite spot in the city!

I love people so much and I genuinely love to be around people all of the time, so when first starting to solo travel, my biggest fear understandably was getting lonely. However, traveling alone has helped me to learn to love spending time with just myself. There were some days exploring with other travelers when I was wishing I was by myself! When alone, you’re able to get to know yourself a little better, what you like to dedicate your time to, sights you most enjoy seeing, how you interact with other people around you. It helps you discover new sides of yourself you may have never taken the time to explore.

Solo travel has taught me that we all have more skills than we ever take the time to realize. I don’t have enough money to hire a travel agent, so I have had to pull on my big girl panties and figure out how to get it all done on my own, which has left me feeling incredibly accomplished. Go on a solo adventure and I can almost promise that you will experience that feeling too! There are so many skills we all posses, we just never test them out, so we never truly know how far we can go (yes, I am quoting Moana) until we push ourselves past that comfort zone we sometimes can keep ourselves trapped in.

Determination

If you follow any solo travelers on social media, it looks like they are living the freaking dream. And yea, they totally might be, but you also need to realize that social media is just the highlight reel. Solo travel is not just a bucket of sunshine and rainbows. I’ll be the first to tell you that it’s HARD. It’s hard and it’s stressful and it’s uncomfortable. There have been so so so SO many times when I’m traveling where the stress just gets to me and I just want to give up and go back home. And then I look at all these other travel bloggers living in total wonderland with everything going perfectly and their photos coming out perfectly and their hair looks perfect and their meals and hotels and everything about their trip is just perfect…

Scrolling through that when I’m sitting in a train station in Italy soaking wet from the rain, carrying my 30-pound backpack and crying because I can’t find my host family or a single place in the whole town that has wifi…yea that makes me feel like I’m completely failing. I must be doing something wrong if I’m in this situation while every other solo traveler is having a sunshine and rainbows experience…

And that’s where determination kicks in. I have learned that I could sit, crying in a train station because the stress has become too much to handle, or I could allow myself a minute, then get up and figure out where it was I need to go and how to get there.

I was determined for Europe to be one of the greatest experiences of my life, so I had to be the one to make that happen. Sometimes, that was staying up until 2AM studying, trying to learn enough of the language to have full conversations so I could make better connections with the people I was hanging out with. Sometimes, that was taking the bus for the fiftieth time that week even though I was exhausted and calling a cab would be a thousand times faster and more convenient but also a thousand time more expensive. Sometimes, that was even waking up at 4am after getting three hours of sleep to get on a boat to the Greek islands to allow myself one extra day of exploration.

Solo travel teaches you that if you’re heart is in something and you have enough determination to make it great, it can and will be an amazing experience.

Patience and self-care

Solo traveling is stressful (if you haven’t picked up on that yet). Especially if you’re also doing it on a budget. There were times in Europe where I would stay at a different place every single night for a week straight with different people from CouchSurfing just in an effort to not pay outrageous hotel prices. I know that my trip was more stressful than it needed to be, but I was determined to make it last as long as possible which meant cutting out unnecessary costs.

Due to this, I had to learn to be patient with myself. I am very much an extroverted person and I am also a very go-go-go kind of person. However, there were times, after spending every second of every day with people and constantly exploring different cities, I would realize that I was completely drained and would have nothing more of myself to offer. Even though I loved staying with locals, I knew that sometimes, I just needed time to myself.

My last day in Naples, Italy, I had big plans of going visit Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius and then going out for drinks with some friends I had met. But being patient with myself, I knew I had reached my limit. Instead of my big plans, I reserved a bed at a hostel for the night, bought some candy at a corner store down the road and I stayed in bed and watched Netflix and ate candy all day. That was exactly what I needed. I had to learn that it was okay if I didn’t go on a crazy excursion every single day. If I would only be in Europe for a week or two, then yea maybe. But if you’re in a place for nine months, you’re definitely allowed to have a few chill days of doing absolutely nothing!

I learned that even if we convince ourselves that we don’t, we all do have a limit. I am one to never ever turn down an invitation to hang out or go out or do something fun, but after saying yes a hundred times in a row, I’ve had to learn that there needs to be a point when I say no and work on my personal self-care.

Taking care of yourself is essential to having a great experience, not only in traveling, but in life in general. Learn what is refreshing to your soul. Whether that’s sitting in a bubble bath drinking a glass of wine, meditating and journaling, or running 5 miles (yea, you have fun with that one, I’ll take the first two options, please!).

Confidence

I have always struggled with self-confidence. Probably like every other person in the world, at some points in my life, I’ve struggled with not feeling pretty enough, or funny enough, or smart enough, or brave enough… The world, especially with the explosion of social media, has this terrible way of making you feel like you are not enough. Everyone else has their crap figured out and you’re way behind the crowd. Trust me, I’ve been there. I come from very small-town Louisiana. And I mean very small. Like population 400!

Traveling full time isn’t something most people do where I’m from. Especially alone. And the fact that I am a woman makes it even crazier. I have had so many people in my life telling me that traveling across the world by myself is insane, or sleeping in my car is unheard of, or living in a new city every six months is ridiculous. I know I do crazy and insane and ridiculous things, and sometimes, I lose confidence in myself because some of the things I do are so off the wall. It can be difficult to believe you can do something if what you’re doing is completely against the norms you’re surrounded by.

However, solo traveling has given me that confidence in myself that I have needed. I can say that I have flown across the world, by myself, with nothing more than a backpack and a ukulele and traveled to three different countries, not knowing any of the languages, and I figured it out. Because of my solo travel experiences, I truly believe that there is nothing that I can’t accomplish if my heart is truly in it. I have a list of dreams and goals for my life that is probably longer than the Nile river and there’s many of those dreams that I have been putting off because honestly, I lacked confidence that I could accomplish them. Traveling alone has given me that confidence boost that I needed to keep pushing to chase and accomplish all of my dreams. It’s also helped me to dream even bigger. It has taught me that my life can be as fulfilling and adventure-filled as I make it to be and I can dream as big as I want to!

So yea, even through the stress and the hardships and the rough days, my trip to Europe was still one of the greatest experiences of my life. This has been something that has been in the back of my mind since my freshman year of college (7 whole years ago!) and on October 6^th, I finally bit the bullet and booked my one-way flight!

I could write a million pages explaining every single detail of solo traveling, but it is honestly something you can never fully understand until you take that leap for yourself. Yes, it is scary. Yes, it is hard. Yes, it will be stressful. Yes, you may get lonely or homesick. But if you were to ask me if it is worth it. Without a split second of thought, I would say yes a million times over.

Solo travel will teach you more about yourself than you ever knew there was to learn. If you are considering if and you can’t find that push to just book that plane ticket, let this post be that push! The adventure of a lifetime could be waiting for you!

If you have any questions about solo travel, I would love to answer them! Or if you have any solo travel stories of your own, share them in the comments, I always love hearing other traveler’s stories!

If you enjoy reading about all my adventures and travels and want to support my blog financially, I would greatly appreciate that!! To do this, you can scroll down a bit and visit my Patreon page (just click that little orange button!) to decide how you want to support me. Thanks so much and remember to make every day an adventure!

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before

Albert Einstein