solo travelling. that’s going to be today’s theme. why did I do it? why do I love it? what are the benefits? and most importantly why you should do it too.

for you, who don’t know me and who haven’t read the according blog entries yet: I traveled to Mexico when I was 18 years old and stayed in Central America for another 8 months. and I went alone. being 18 and just out of school I really didn’t have a good explanation for why I wanted to go. or why Mexico. I can make up a lot of reasons and philosophy if we don’t all feel that way at least once in our lives, but here’s my straight forward answer: I just had a calling. since I was 10 years old I had wanted to go abroad so here I was 18 and free. so I decided to leave everything behind and just go out into the world.

only over the next weeks and actually months and often only now I realise(d) how much I grew over time. before I left, I was this 18 year old kid with a dream and a deep longing in her soul and a more or less waterproof plan. and now I am still a kid inside but from time to time I trip over these memories that formed the woman I am today. the ones that brought me right to this point. the most random situations, remind me of something similar that had happened months before. or only after cooking my egg and tomatoes for weeks in a certain way, I remember who had taught me to do it like that. once you get out there and experience the world, it cannot be undone. these memories will not just vanish and I’m glad they won’t.

when returning home (especially after longer trips) we bring with us a backpack full of… clothes we didn’t need, maybe 3kg of shells, filled journals and memories. it’s the memories that way heaviest. I left with a 15kg backpack and returned with 30kg, but it wasn’t the backpack that weighed heavily on my heart when I touched Austrian ground for the first time in 254 days. and you have all these stories to tell, but they’ll never be fully grasped and understood if your audience hasn’t been out there themselves experiencing the world. and learning their own lessons.

I personally love solo traveling. you get to meet so many new people and have all the freedom in the world to turn around whenever you want to, eat whatever you feel like eating, stay however long or leave whenever you want to. basically you do not dependent on anyone. that is exactly why you learn to listen to your heart. when you walk the streets of a foreign city alone and don’t know where to go, it’s your intuition that tells you which café to choose. it’s your inner longing that tells you, if you feel like a swim in the ocean or a drink on a rooftop bar. and you can choose, if you want to be social or not. that’s the part I love most. solo travelling doesn’t mean being lonely. it’s in hostels, couchsurfing and in the streets, cafés, clubs and planes where you meet amazing people. but you have to put yourself out there. only if you accept that good things are waiting for you and that you attract what you live, these things will happen to you. my best friends today, I met on my travels. and I have a good story to tell about every first encounter. one I met in a school in Costa Rica, one completely overwhelmed in a corridor in Mexico, one half drunk at a pizza place in Panama, another one on the plane, two in a club and weeks later cooking in a hostel, another one was my roomie in Costa Rica. and there are so many more first encounters that changed my life. you take a piece from every person you meet in your life. there is one tiny part in your heart that holds a space for them. however random and however short your encounter might have been.

back to the benefits of solo backpacking. by having to handle everything alone, you grow into a great problem solver. you might not realise it right away, but months later you find yourself looking back on all the hurdles and challenges life threw into your way and notice how you just handled them. you overcame them again and again. next, your view on the world totally changes. if you never saw with your own eyes what it means to be so poor, you cannot even afford a door to your house, you might not as deeply appreciate the luxury you’re living in. you get a much deeper sense of thankfulness and appreciation for “normal” things, object, attributes to your life you didn’t even question before. running water, hot water, drinking water taps, mosquito nets, fresh food, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, walking safely in the street at night. on solo trips you really educate yourself. what I learned is, if I don’t have someone next to me I can ask all my questions and refuse to google everything right away, I need to find my own answers. that involves taking time to reflect on encounters, hours of deep talks, and situations I’ve never seen before. most important to me was learning to listen to myself. I learned that I have all the answers to my own questions in me. that only I can know what’s possibly right for me. that my intuition and gut feeling are right. that I need to listen to my own body. and to my soul.

I hope your backpack full of memories teaches you the lessons you need to learn in this life and remind you what you are capable of. flipping back through my diaries and reliving the situations through my own words is what keeps me going too. the only bad thing about solo travelling I can think of, is the addiction it creates 😉