Over the last few years, I’ve had a number of women, friends and strangers, contact me with questions and concerns about their desire to pack up and go and their apprehension in traveling alone as a female.
Let me preface this blog post by saying that I personally have not found myself in potentially dangerous situations over the last 3 years of traveling solo, but that’s not to say it doesn’t happen. I have had many friends who have had bad things happen to them. Is it because they ween’t being smart, mindful or aware of their surroundings? No, not at all. There are shitty people in this world who have bad intentions and they’ll sniff you out regardless of the precautions you take. Bad things happen sometimes. So again, this post is a subjective approach based on my personal and positive experiences as a solo female traveler.
It is the most liberating and empowering feeling to shove all your earthly belongings into a backpack and JUST GO. A few weeks after I graduated college I decided to pack up and move to Thailand for a whole year. I hadn’t really seen much of the world before that but for some reason I had this feeling deep in my bones that I needed a major life change. I needed to wake the fuck up and open my eyes to another way of life as opposed to the dull, numbing one I was living. I remember landing in Bangkok after 30+ hours of travel. I stepped off the plane and immediately my ears were flooded with this white noise of a language I had never heard before. I barely knew how to say hello in Thai and panic started to set in as I thought, “What the fuck are you doing Jennifer? What have you just gotten yourself into?”
I’ve told people time and time again that there is a deeply profound beauty in being naive. The most beautiful experiences and life-altering decisions I’ve made have all been because I didn’t think too much about it. Why? Because when you decide you’re going to move away from everything you’ve ever known, thinking about it too much will scare the shit out of you and almost always you’ll find a reason to not go through with it. So if you’re a woman who wants to get out and travel, to sleep in bus stations and motorcycle through the Himalayas, DO IT. Don’t think. Just go. Your spirit will thank you later, trust.
LONELINESS
As a solo traveler, feelings of loneliness are unavoidable. Every person is different in when their feelings of loneliness tend to set in. Personally, I deal with separation anxiety and sadness right off the bat. The first 2-3 weeks are always hard. No matter how busy I stay or how much I throw myself into my new surroundings, I usually end up crying myself to sleep. After those first few weeks though, I adapt really quickly. Other people I’ve met along my travels tend to be the opposite. They become so distracted by the newness and excitement of being away from home for the first few weeks, and one the newness has worn off, then their loneliness sets in. The thing to understand about this is that it almost always passes eventually. Humans are meant to be versatile, to adapt. The human spirit is so much stronger than we think. We can get used to almost anything after a length of time. But also feelings of loneliness have helped me grow so fucking much. As a solo female traveler, I realized I am the only person who is able to help myself. Over the last three years I have learned how to self-soothe, to talk myself down, to really get to know this complicated and beautiful soul that resides in me. When I start feeling lonely I always reach out to my dad. It might sound corny but to have that one person to speak to and seek words of wisdom from is everything. I always seek his advice because my pops has also been an extensive solo traveler who has spent years away from his family, spending Christmas alone and birthdays alone, seeing his children grow up without their dad. When I moved to Saudi Arabia, my sadness and homesickness reached an all-time high. My dad and I exchanged e-mails multiple times a day for about 2 months. If it wasn’t for his constant love and support, I don’t know if I would have made it through that year in the sandbox. Talking to loved ones when you’re lonely is a double-edge sword. You don’t want to rely on them so much that you’re missing out on this new and beautiful experience before you. So my best advice is to have one go-to person who can identify with you and have them to fall back on during your weak moments.
TRUST YOURSELF
There’s a practice that Meghan Currie, yoga hippy fairy badass, had us do every morning during our yoga training in Nicaragua. It was so simple but so powerful. Stand in front of a mirror and get super close. Like so close to where you can see just your eyes. Stand there for two minutes. Look at yourself. Try to go inward as much as you yourself will allow. The results are overwhelming and empowering and heart-altering all in one. It wasn’t until after the first week that I got through the initial awkwardness of picking out eye boogers and fixing my hair that I really tuned into myself. If you look long enough and hard enough, you start to see this inner existence. It was a child-like spirit and it pulled me in as if to whisper in my ear, “I’ve got you. You’ve got you. When all else fails and disappoints, you’ve still got you.” So often we rely on other people for validation. We stay in bad relationships, we foster unhealthy friendships, we surround ourselves with uninspiring white noise so we don’t have to deal with what’s really going on. But the most crucial life lesson I’ve learned throughout my travels is that this meat vessel I’m living in is the only one I’ve got for as long as I live, and the spirit that dwells inside is all I need to feel fulfilled in life. The more I’m alone, the more I have my own back. People will always disappoint you, but you’ve got you. Trust your instincts. Trust that feeling you get deep in your bones. Trust where your heart leads you and truly listen to what it’s saying. If you end up sleeping in a bus station n Phnom Penh, know that you’re supposed to be there, because you really listened to that inner compass that lead you there to begin with.
STAY AWAY FROM RIGIDITY
As women, we have a tendency to get lost in the tiny details. How’s that saying go? The devil is in the details? As a female solo traveler, it’s very important to have a ROUGH travel itinerary because it’s important to do some research about where you’re going. That’s just being smart. But I say ROUGH because when you solo travel, you become so much more free and susceptible to the places that resonate with you and the people you feel this pull towards. One of the happiest times of my life was when I had a month and a half of nothing to do in Thailand. I finished my teaching contract and wasn’t quite ready to go back to the states. I packed my backpack, got a bus ticket, and rode all the way to Chiang Mai. I had no cell phone, no laptop, no wifi. Just me, my pack, and my camera. It was pure liberation. I originally had plans to stay with girlfriends in a hostel for about a week while we went sightseeing and celebrated Songkran, the Thai New Year. After meeting up with Mr. Cat, the coolest Thai hippie musician with the best hair and a bright yellow Taxi cab, I decided to pack up again and bounce from the hostel. A whole group of us chased waterfalls and played music, smoked weed and ate Khao Soi, rode on top of the taxi cab and slept in a treehouse. Thinking back on it and even when it was happening, everything seemed to be covered in this sepia lens. Everything looked golden and felt golden. I was at my happiest and most free. If I had been so stuck to the people I was with and the plans I had made, I never would have gotten to experience that. Know the general areas where you want to travel and get your learn on, know the cool spots to see but also float. Floating around often leads you down secret alleyways and hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, hidden treasures that only locals know about. Places that Lonely Planet doesn’t even know exists.
BALANCE CAUTION AND CURIOSITY
The majority of people you run into when you’re traveling abroad want to help you, not harm you. I find that when I’m in a hostel, I very rarely feel the need to lock up my less than valuable possessions because solo travelers tend to have this mutual respect for one another in that we’re all in the same boat. However, there are shitty people in this world who aim to do shitty things to you. The same intuition and good judgement that you use to stay safe at home are the same things you need when you travel abroad, especially as a female. When meeting fellow travelers, trust the vibe you get from them. Once again, most people only want to help, not cause harm. I’ve found that locals are the most genuine people you’ll ever meet and foreigners, ehhh not always. One weekend I decided to take a trip to Southern Thailand to meet friends for a Full Moon Party. Twice in one night, the same creepy white Russian dude tried spiking my drink. I was aware that he was watching me and following me, and caught him hovering his hand over my drink TWICE when I turned around to talk to a friend. Both times I just poured the drink on his feet in the sand and went and bought another one. No 2 dollar beer is worth the risk, trust me. So although I was curious enough to go to the Full Moon Party, I made sure I was with good people and didn’t let myself get too crazy where I didn’t notice the creepy Russian dude trying to roofie me. As female solo travelers, we have to be hyper aware of our surroundings. Not to the point of staying in our hostel 24/7 but not to the point of getting lit AF all by your lonesome. Plus, that’s just not all that fun. Use your judgement. Use common sense. But keep that wide-eyed curiosity.
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts. It even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you. It should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully you leave something good behind…” –Anthony Bourdain