One of my lifelong dreams has been to hire a camper-van and travel across America with someone I love. However life happens, things don’t happen how you want and circumstances change. I had the opportunity to go travelling this year for a few weeks, and at the time of booking it I was in a relationship, but my boyfriend couldn’t come along and then I was adamant I wanted to go solo, to do it for me. My then relationship ended, and I was so happy I hadn’t relied on someone else for the excuse to get out there and see the world. And in doing so, I learnt many things, had the greatest adventure, had some of the most insane experiences and realised why travelling solo can be totally amazing. Don’t get me wrong, when the time is right and I’m with someone I love, I will absolutely want to travel with them. But right now, these are reasons why travelling solo is amaaaazing!
1) Imagine all those photo’s that would be ruined if you ever broke up. IMAGINE. That sick view in front of the grand canyon, ruined because your pain in the bum ex is in the pic? Solo travel rocks. Because it’ll be just you in those sweet photos that will be there forever/and/or people you travel with who make the adventure the trip of a lifetime.
2) You can do things you want to do. You want to go to the California Academy of Science, good, you go. Your other half wants to go to a museum you have no interest in, and you waste half a day in San Francisco, one of the greatest cities in the world, being dragged around somewhere you’d rather not be. Yeah, do what you want!
3) You learn a lot about yourself. That situation where you lost your purse in San Fran and were penniless and hungry for nearly 24 hours and you had to borrow money off of someone in your hostel. You don’t learn from experiences like that when travelling with someone else.
4) You have to throw yourself into situations and make friends with everyone. Quite a lot of people go on Trek America trips in couples, which I can imagine being lovely, but I can also see it being quite restrictive. On that first day when no-one knows each other and you just have to throw yourself into conversations and friendships, are the sort of situations that you cherish and remember forever. If you had someone there as a safety blanket, to turn to talk to, it just wouldn’t be the same. Being on your own forces you to step out of your comfort zone and do things you might not think you could do.
5) It’s a confidence booster!. I came back from my trip so refreshed, with a right zest for getting on with life solo. Since coming back i’ve thought about having a weekend away in England on my own exploring, and have also gone to the cinema on my own. Things I would never have even contemplated before my trip. I’ve noticed the change in my confidence, and so have my friends and my family, and it’s such a positive that is 100% down to my trip.
Obviously one day I would love to travel with someone I really care about, but right now my situation is a solo one, so I made the most of it, and I wouldn’t change a thing!
Sophie xx