Pros of Solo Travel and Why You Should Try It

“Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.”

– Hannah Arendt

1. Flexibility

When travelling alone, the only thing that dictates your travel plans is your own whims. However, when travelling with a partner, it’s seldom that your interests and travel goals will always aline. Even if you had meticulously planned out your itinerary before engaging in the trip itself, no trip ever sticks to the preset plan entirely, and those impulse activities or adventures can easily become a subject of conflict between you and your partner.

Say you’ve been travelling around the Greek mainland, and a week into the trip, you hear about a beautiful nature hike through the mountains of the countryside. You want to do the walk the following day before moving on to the next step in your trip. Still, your partner wants to stick to the original itinerary and explore the fourth archaeological museum since you’ve arrived. What do you do?

While you could separate and each do the activity you want, it can typically lead to a bit of awkwardness that evening. So now you have to decide to either go on that hike at the risk of upsetting your friend or miss the walk altogether and stick to the original itinerary. Either way, there is a slight tension that is not present when travelling solo.

---

2. Cultural immersion

A travel partner is by nature a tether to your home town. Only by removing this tether are you fully opening yourself up to the experiences of new cultures. Yet, that’s not to say the influences of your native culture won’t play their part if you travel solo.

No, those hometown perspectives follow you wherever you go. But by removing the external tether, these perspectives don’t get reinforced by a third-party influence. This allows for new perspectives of foreign cultures to take root. The ability to develop your view of the world beyond the short sight of your native society is one of the top pros of solo travel.

---

3. You’re never truly alone

Whenever I tell someone about a trip, they always ask me who I went with. They all seem surprised when I tell them I went alone. For many, the word alone is synonymous with lonely. But, that belief is just not true.

Solo Travel, by definition, would imply being on your own. However, from the moment of arrival, you are rarely ever actually so. In fact, being by yourself pushes you to make connections that you otherwise would miss out on with a travel partner.

Whether it’s getting to know the cab driver, the proprietor of your stay, or a fellow traveller, the connections you make will become valuable resources throughout your trip.

---

4. Greater connections

Not only are you going to meet more people during your trip, but the friendships you make are also going to be so much more meaningful than those if you were travelling with a partner.

By travelling solo, you make yourself more approachable. You also force yourself to explore new relationships that you otherwise wouldn’t if you are travelling with a friend. The presence of a travel partner means that you always have a comfortable option to satisfy your social appetite.

By travelling solo, you allow the short-term acquaintances that you meet while travelling to develop into lifelong friendships. And who knows? Maybe you might just find your next travel partner to continue your adventure with.

---

5. Introverted journey

While there is nothing wrong with travelling with a friend, the occasional solo trip allows you to explore yourself. Much like how a partner tethers you to the culture of your hometown, they also distract from your inner exploration.

Before I started travelling, the idea of doing anything alone freaked me out. Be it going to the movies or grabbing dinner at a restaurant; I always needed to have somebody else there. I would refuse to be left alone with my thoughts. However, in doing so, I found I acted according to the social formalities of the culture I was born into. I never genuinely acted according to my own decisions, but I became a robot to proprieties.

By travelling solo, you are left with your own raw, organic thoughts, allowing you the opportunity to explore who you are while exploring new external influences. While likely one of the cheesiest pros of solo travel, it is also one of the best.

---

6. Personal Growth 

In psychology, there is a theory that states that each person has multiple states of themselves. According to this theory, these states are typically influenced by a person’s relationships. As the theory goes, each individual you ever come into contact with has a unique perception of who you are. As such, they develop expectations of you which you subconsciously act in accordance to. That is to say, that as long as you stay within the confines of a limited social circle, then you never truly have the opportunity to grow.

While there are different ways to facilitate this growth, be it starting a new job, or simply branching out of your social circle, I really believe the best way to grow is through travel. What better way to grow than starting fresh in a foreign country, where nobody has any pre-established sense of who you were.

By travelling solo, you shed the perspectives of your established relationships that restrain your self-development. Instead, you open yourself up to the influences of foreign ideas to develop your own new sense of self.

---

7. Build confidence

W​hen I started travelling, I was an 18-year-old kid that was too scared to book his own dentist appointments. As a kid right out of high school, and with crippling social anxiety, I lacked the confidence to do anything. Part of me believes that is why I wanted to travel in the first place.

For many, university is the first time they venture off on their own, and they build confidence in the process. I took it to the next level.

I set myself completely alone in Nicaragua, a third-world country with a history of unrest. While the country was more or less safe for travel at the time, it provided me with confidence. Confidence that told me I could do anything and go anywhere.

By solo travelling my way through the Central American country, I forced myself to engage with people in a way that my anxiety would never have allowed me to back home. While the month-long trip didn’t magically make me a cool, collected, confident individual overnight, it did set me on a journey towards the person I wanted to be.

Six years later, and with more solo trips under my belt, I’m still not the most cool and collected person. However, I can confidently say solo travel has helped develop me into the confident person I am today.

---

8. Independence

T​his one kind of goes hand in hand with confidence. By travelling solo, you force yourself to do everything. As I have said, my first trip was the first time I was on my own. For the first time, I was forced to arrange everything for myself. Suppose I had gone on the trip with a travel partner, that would not have been the case. I would’ve faded to the background and let them engage others for me. I would’ve just been along for the ride.

Not only did I force myself to engage others, book tours, hostels, and cabs, while also making new friends, but for the first time, I ate at restaurants and went to see movies alone. A habit that I carried over when I returned home.

---

9. Easier to be in the moment

Much like how travelling solo frees you from the tethers of your native culture, it also frees you from any reminders of the past, allowing you to embrace the present. While travelling with a partner typically offers you a future source of reminiscence of your trip, it can also take away from fully appreciating the moments actually spent on the road.

As a species, our average attention span is only 8-seconds. That is seldom long enough to appreciate the beauty of our world fully. Unfortunately, travelling with a partner provides the presence of a reliable distraction.

However, travelling solo forces us to maintain our attention beyond that 8-seconds. It allows us the opportunity to observe every minute detail of our experiences. By travelling alone, we can immerse ourselves in the ways the waves break along the cove as surfers catch their final swells of the day, or the slight sounds of a fishing boat as it wades its way to the docks of the harbour village as the sky cherries with the setting sun behind the towering mountains. One of the biggest pros of solo travel is that it allows us to embrace each moment.

---

10. Greater Sense of Achievement

This is pretty self-explanatory. You’re bound to experience a sense of achievement for any trip, whether solo or with a partner. With that being said, that sense of accomplishment is so much more prevalent after a solo trip. After navigating your way through a foreign country, you return home with a whole new outlook. It is a feeling reinforced with the praises of your friends and families who couldn’t fathom doing it themselves. You feel as if you’re a great explorer, able to delve to the furthest corners of the world. And with the prevailing wanderlust that will doubtlessly fill your being, you just may. 

---

1​1. Productive Travel

So this one does not innately come with solo travel, but rather is an attribute made easier when you do. When travelling with a partner, you always have someone present with whom you feel you need to engage in activities constantly. This naturally involves spending your nights either at a local bar or exploring your destination’s nightlife in some way.

Now I’m not saying by travelling solo you aren’t going to do this. I’m just saying you aren’t going to feel the need to do this every night. By travelling solo, you can slow things down on occasion. You can spend a night staying in at your hotel or dorm and not feel guilty about it. With this new free time, you quickly can find yourself doing the things you’ve always put off at home.

Whether it is writing the book you have been working on since high school or finding a side hustle as a digital nomad, you find yourself able to separate yourself from all distractions and find a productivity that you otherwise wouldn’t with a travel partner.

1​2. No one to tell you “no”

While this can also be considered a drawback of solo travel, it can also be considered an advantage as it offers experiences that you otherwise wouldn’t have. By travelling solo, you act entirely on your instincts, which can often be contradictory to a partner’s instincts. This is why I consider this advantage as a double edge sword. Sometimes your instincts can lead to extraordinary, unique experiences, and sometimes it can land you in trouble. For the sake of this article, I’m going to share a story of how this point is beneficial. You can find other examples of how this can have negative results here.

Now for a quick story

This aspect of solo travel became first beneficial to me during a night out in the colonial town of Granada, Nicaragua. After a day of going around to several tour agencies looking for a tour to the active Masaya Volcano, I was vocalizing my disappointment of failing to find one for a local at the bar. That is when he told me that his son-in-law was a park ranger and that he was set to bring another group of tourists the following night, offering to allow me to tag along.

The experience was better than I could have imagined. Brought directly to the volcano crater, we were allowed fifteen minutes to straddle the edge(the walls that typically bordered the crater, keeping tourists back a safe distance, had been melted away), watching as the volcanic lava melted its way through the rock. When he had initially asked if I wanted to join, I was torn.

My instinct was to trust this stranger, although it did seem slightly sketchy. Had I been with a partner, the scenario easily could have been too much for them, and we would have missed out on this opportunity. Let’s be honest. It seemed sketchy. However, being by myself and only having myself to answer, I decided to do it, and I got to experience something that I may never again have the opportunity to. 

Now lets discuss the cons