Traveling alone might never have been on your mind if you’re an introvert or have no interest in stepping outside of your comfort zone, while people around the world are letting themselves explore the world in a new way of traveling with no one to involve in their decision, destroying their independence.
Benefit or not, traveling solo will definitely transform you in a way that will help you in the long run in your life by providing a lot of experiences, learnings, and by discovering your hidden abilities. Most certainly, it will help you conquer your fears, with the biggest fear possibly being traveling alone in a foreign country where the culture and language might become a barrier to you. You are going to overcome such fears with your own capability.
Have you ever imagined becoming a bird, flying alone in the sky to explore the beauty beneath you? You don’t have to be one. Traveling solo can help you become way more than that by allowing you to explore the beauty from the distance of your hand with no one to intercept. Here, you are going to explore the advantages of solo travel, which are more than enough for you to be inspired.
1. Complete Freedom:
With no one holding you back or interfering with your decisions, you will feel like the king of your own kingdom. Starting from the very beginning, when a thought comes into your mind of a trip, to decide the destination, even the hotel you are going to stay in or the flight you are going to choose. At every step, you are the decision-maker, unveiling the freedom you’ve ever craved for.
2. Get what you always wanted:
Growing a desire to taste a dish that is too expensive to share with others? Or perhaps being held back by someone, denying you the pleasure of the flavor you’ve always craved? Here is your opportunity. A life full of exploration will give you a little bit of personal space to overcome your regrets.
3. Meeting New People:
In this beautiful world, do you know what the most beautiful thing is? People. The variation of knowledge and thoughts makes each person unique. With individual abilities, human beings have shaped the world to the position it holds today.
When you travel alone, you have the opportunity to meet these unique minds. But how? Imagine this: you’re traveling from one city to another by train. You find yourself seated opposite a philosophy professor from a university or a seasoned world explorer. You strike up a conversation with them on various topics. Don’t you think you can learn a lot from their experiences during that long journey? This is just a simple scenario I’m taking you through. There are thousands of situations where you’ll meet people and get the opportunity to learn from them.
4. Make new friends
Solo travel opens up opportunities to meet unknown people and sometimes creates the possibility of becoming friends with them. A brief moment of interaction and conversation with new people can sometimes lead to long-lasting friendships. Making friends in person around the world, rather than solely online, can be more meaningful in life.
Imagine this scenario: You’re visiting a city with your family or office colleagues where nothing is familiar and everything is unknown. However, you happen to meet a few friends from that city whom you encountered on a solo trip long ago and stayed in touch with. Your companions will surely admire you for having that privilege.
5. Selfishness
Traveling with family, friends, or with a group of people will lead you to compromise selflessly on your likes, dislikes, and certain things that you could do or have experienced if you were the decision-maker, where nobody would be affected by it. Selfishness will never have a limit in your solo travel. Taking your own decisions and making experiences the way you want is going to be your ultimate tool to gain self-satisfaction.
6. Stepping out of comfort zone
Traveling alone for the first time cannot be comfortable for anyone at all. Not knowing the culture of a society and having the nervousness of certain interactions with an unknown language, and the fear of getting lost somewhere like a drop in an ocean. That is going to be the ultimate comfort zone breaker the moment you decide to solo travel, whatever it takes.
7. Opportunity to know yourself:
How much do you think you know yourself? People think they know enough, but it’s not. People cannot know themselves better until they reflect on themselves on their own. Just step in front of a mirror, it’ll let you know your face. You’ll then learn whether you are white or black, if you have a long nose or black eyes, how thick your eyebrows are. The same thing happens when you travel alone. You’ll have to make your own decisions. You have to choose your own meal. You are going to decide whether you should travel by bus or train. This way you will learn how capable you are and what results your decisions bring.
8. Learn through mistakes
Like there are sayings, “necessity is the mother of invention”, “mistake is the father of discovery”. I don’t know who said that (Actually it’s me :p ). But the lesson is, if you are not making mistakes, you are not learning new ways of doing things. Traveling solo is the most suitable option to test yourself with so many mistakes. You probably made the wrong decision to choose the flight or got lost somewhere else while going towards your hotel. You might get involved in a quarrel between local people. What if you booked a wrong hotel with a lot of expense while there were a lot of better options available at a good price.
I bet you won’t do those things and never take the decisions again in your life intentionally as you learned by making mistakes.
9. Decision Making and Problem Solving:
Mommy is not allowing you to swim on the beach or play football on the mud?
Don’t you know how to handle the situation while missing a connecting flight?
One of the most precious benefits of solo travel is taking your own decisions and solving a problem with your own skills and abilities. You’ll get the chance to testify your power of problem-solving while in a situation where nobody is here to help you out but your own.
10. Opportunity to improve new language skills:
Learning a new language is not as hard nowadays as it was in the past. You’ll find a lot of resources throughout the internet. But procrastination, on the other hand, is not helping you to start learning one. When there is an opportunity to travel alone in a country or city with no experience or knowledge of their language, while you have to survive the situations alone by interacting with the locals, it will not leave you a choice but to learn some common words and phrases in that language. That is going to be the start of a new journey into your exploration deep into learning a new language.
11. Boosts your confident:
Want to empower yourself? There is no better way to build your empowerment and confidence than solo travel. The benefits you are going to get from traveling alone, boosting your confidence will be at the top of the list. Especially if you are in your early 20’s, the experience will help you build your life and career with the ability to make a lot of daring decisions and actions in the future.
12. Conquer your fear:
Conquer your heart and soul first before you conquer the world. Having fear and self-doubt is essentially the greatest drawback in your life. People are mostly affected by the fear of the unknown. If you are one of those people, then you are on board if you are deciding to travel solo. The overcoming experiences in your trip where things are mostly unknown will definitely help you to conquer the demon in your heart.
13. Cost-effective yet expense from your heart:
With no one else here to share your wallet, you can expense in a more calculative way. Another benefit is that you can purchase or consume whatever you want as you don’t have to think for others who might become unhappy about not being able to do or purchase whatever you are doing.
14. See things in a new perspective:
You’ll see and discover things from a new perspective. There, you will learn the differences between walking among known and unknown people. Where there will be nobody to discuss a decision or plan with from several viewpoints, you’ll realize that it is solely up to you to decide. You will be learning about your heart and the power of its solo decision-making abilities.
15. Increase adaptability:
Adapting to a new situation is not for everyone. As human beings, people often resist stepping outside of their comfort zone. Spending a night under a tent or traveling to a remote area where no standard vehicle is available requires one to let themselves go with the flow.
16. Life long memory:
Our life is full of memories. Some bring us joy, while others become experiences. People love to cherish good memories to live life with full satisfaction. If there is a memory of your own filled with lots of unlearned knowledge, going through many unknown experiences will definitely provide you with some unique topics to chit-chat about with your family and friends.
17. Sense of achievement:
Real satisfaction comes through excellent achievements. Someday, you will find yourself reminiscing about your memories and will see achievements that nobody needed to help you acquire.
18. Become inspiration for others:
We always love to share stories of our own achievements and adventures. People seek examples when it comes to doing something on their own. Your trip today will become an inspiration to others in the future. Your memories and learning will become knowledge for some people. Your experiences will help them handle or avoid situations that they might come across. Overall, what you are learning today through solo travel as a beginner will help other people plan and act upon it knowingly.
19. Examine yourself:
Having doubts about your abilities? Just step outside, take a deep breath, and be ready to overcome whatever comes your way. Don’t worry, I’m not telling you to fight someone. Just continue doing whatever you’re doing and see what works for you and what doesn’t. Look at things from a different perspective and examine your abilities.
