Travel Solo

You cross paths with other people in life, sometimes walk the road together for a while.

But ultimately it all comes back to you. Your relationship with yourself. If you’re sitting alone for a day or a month. No parties, no work, no schedule. Do you want to spend time with that person?

Traveling alone is one of the fastest, most powerful ways to reveal the cracks, pain points, fear. So you can get comfortable with them and can develop a richer relationship with yourself.

Solo travel can be particularly powerful when you’ve hit a cross roads in life. When decisions need to be made and a direction chosen. Or you’re finally ready to heal yourself, it can shake up your life and open space for new habits or ways of thinking.

How to travel solo for the first time:

If leaving fills you with fear. That’s normal. Keep going.

If you have to book a tour or travel to visit someone, it can be a good kick-start. Anything that gives you a push to go on your own.

But it can be most powerful when you’re all alone. Plan to walk on empty beaches, eat dinner at a restaurant alone, sit in your room in silence.

Don’t be in contact regularly with friends and family from home. Let people know you’re safe, but go on your own journey. Tell your journal.

Talk to strangers. Ask for directions. Ask for help. Make eye contact. Smile. Make your own luck. Be open to opportunity.

Take public transport and stay in guesthouse when possible, rather than cabs and private hotels.

It’s not that you want to be alone all the time. It’s about being comfortable alone and practicing at introducing that person to the world. Seeing opportunity and people you may not have seen before because you were stuck in old ways of thinking.

Shake it up. Find ways to do things that make you uncomfortable. Meditate, go diving, camping, dancing.

It’s about finding things you never knew you were looking for.

Do you need support with your first solo trip?

I coach women who are planning their first solo trip. Mindset, choosing locations, ways to protect themselves and feel safe. I offer in-trip check-in calls, which can be in-person if traveling through London.

I also coach parents who have children that are planning to travel solo. Mindset and how they can support and protect their children.

Get in touch! thedistancetotravel@gmail.com

More on my solo travel experience:

I went on a Gap year to England when I was 18. I was at a school and traveled around Europe. No one from the US came to visit and I didn’t go home for the year. This was the beginning of my many solo missions. I biked across America self-support after college, with some friends.

When I was 25 I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer and I saved up, packed up my life in Washington, D.C and broke up with my boyfriend. I bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok. There, I had no plans except to lay on Thai beaches till I was sick of it. Then make a new plan.

That year, I stayed in £2 guesthouses in Cambodia, treehouses, took the slow-boat up the Mekong, road in tuk-tuks, walked, climbed into the Himalayas, took a vow of silence, learned to stand on my head, took 36 hour trains. I had romances and met friends I’m still in touch with. I tried to slow everything down — to think, read and write.

I ended up pitching my tent in Canada’s Laurentian Mountains for the summer. And then I took a job in London, where I have lived on and off for the last 15 years. It’s where I met my husband and where we now live with our children.