When most of us think of vacations, we imagine a getaway with family or friends, complete with both the joys of sharing an experience and the frustrations of managing schedules for multiple people and arguing over what to do. We may cringe at the idea of travelling by ourselves, imagining our days being consumed by loneliness and boredom. However, a growing trend, particularly among millennials, encourages us to do just that. The idea is that travelling alone will force you to immerse yourself in an unfamiliar environment, create new connections, and learn about yourself as you discover your capacity for self-reliance and adventure.
One advantage of travelling alone that immediately comes to mind is freedom. One of the drawbacks of being on vacation with a group is that inevitably, some disagreements are bound to arise due to differences in personal taste and preferences. You may find yourself going to a restaurant you’re not particularly interested in for the sake of a friend or family member, or you may feel some guilt over dragging others along to an event that only you are interested in attending. Going it alone replaces these concerns with a degree of freedom we almost never get to experience in everyday life: we can spend as much or as little time as we’d like in different places, and given that we have no obligation to ensure our travelling companions are having a good time, we may find ourselves expanding our horizons and deciding to experience new things on a whim.
It’s no secret that many of us think of travelling as a way to escape the hardships of daily life and hit the “reset” button on our levels of stress and anxiety. And indeed, research has shown that travelling has a number of positive effects on our well-being: having new experiences and being in an unfamiliar environment increases neuroplasticity, or our brains’ ability to rewire itself to learn new things and adapt to different situations, and it has been shown that people who travel more are more creative, happy, agreeable, and emotionally stable. However, most of us don’t travel as often as we’d like to – 63 percent of Americans go six months or longer without a vacation, and more than a quarter go a year without taking any trips. One of the major difficulties people find in planning excursions is making sure that everybody’s schedule lines up, and that there is consensus on a travel destination – travelling alone alleviates these concerns.
When you travel alone, you’ll find yourself bearing the entire burden of doing so, as you’ll have no one to rely on for helping you with things such as navigating airports, carrying and maintaining your luggage, and navigating unfamiliar cities. Having to rely on yourself when travelling has two major benefits: not only do you learn everything you need to know to thrive in an unfamiliar environment, but you develop a sense of confidence in your ability to figure things out when you’re by yourself, which can be useful when you return back to your normal everyday life.
Some travelers like to take the experience a step further, and not only go by themselves, but leave their smartphones at home. Smartphones are incredibly versatile tools, and are particularly useful during travel, as they help us navigate, find things to do and places to eat, and can even help with translation. However, some fear that an over-reliance on this technology impedes their skills in other areas, such as reading a physical map and talking with strangers to gain necessary information. Furthermore, smartphones lead to us being less present and in-the-moment, as we can miss exciting things happening around us when we’re busy staring at our screens, which is particularly concerning when you’re on vacation, as you don’t want to waste your experience. For these reasons, start-up company Off The Grid offers its customers tours of places like Lisbon and Prague, with the requirement that travelers hand off their phones when they arrive, to be returned to them when they depart.
So next time you find yourself yearning for adventure, or hear about a new travel location you’d love to visit, consider the possibility of going alone. You may experience travel in a whole new light.
Tyler Olhorst is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. You can reach him at inquiries@thenationaldigest.com.
