While you keep planning those trips to Goa with your friends (which get cancelled half the time) you might be missing out on one of the greatest adventures you could take. I’m talking about a solo trip. You, an unknown place, and just you. While this may be a nerve-wracking experience, it definitely isn’t an educational one. So, here’s ten lessons one learns when they travel solo.
1. Risk-Taking
To be honest, everything you do at any given moment is a risk. Someway or the other. But when you’re travelling alone, the previous statement is only but more applicable. If anything (God-forbid) goes awry, you’re all alone in a strange land. Yet you take that risk and several others, for the reward, which is many times greater.
2. More Independence
I was going to write just ‘Independence’, but the fact that you’re even taking a trip proves you had some in the first place. You’ll learn how you can live by your own, be dependent on no one, and how you only need you.
3. Critical Thinking
Every moment, you’re brain is running at full capacity. You think of everything. Thoroughly. Your mind makes back up plans too. Besides this, you also begin to ponder about several other things, life, work, personal challenges, etc. and come up with stuff you could never have thought of before.
4. More About Yourself
When it’s just you alone with your thoughts, you begin to discover sides of yourself you didn’t even know were there. Maybe your whole perception of yourself may change. All thanks to a little self reflection on a trip with just you.
5. A Whole New World
Be it food, language, tradition, art, or the people, you’ll encounter what seems like an entirely new world, with it’s own whims and whistles. You get to know so much about that place that you might wish to stay there forever.
6. How To Manage Cash
Whether you’re doing this from the get-go or have to resort to it when you’re down to your last dime, you’ll probably learn how to manage money better. A pretty valuable skill, you’ll also learn of the value (other than numeric) it poses.
7. Small Talk
In your own country you’d probably be averse to even the thought of small talk. But once you’re out there on your own you somehow find it in you to be more engaging with the locals and actually indulge in those tiny conversations with strangers.
8. How Technology Can Truly Connect
You’ll only understand the true value of your phone once you’re abroad. Need to go somewhere? Maps. Need to talk to a local? Translator. Want recommendations? Google. While used mainly for social media, you finally get how useful tech can be when you’re travelling.
9. Responsibility
Taking care of your passport and valuable goods, making sure you follow the norms of the place you travel to, and what not, you finally learn to be a bit more responsible when you’re exploring solo. Throw in some paranoia as you’ll constantly check your pockets to make sure it’s all there.
10. How to get lost. In the truest essence of the word.
When was the last time you were lost? Not recently that’s for sure. When exploring a new place, you’re bound to get lost at times. That’s when you learn to embrace it. Instead of checking your maps, you keep going, lost in your thoughts, steps, and an amazing new place.
