The Beauty of Solo Travel
When I was sixteen, my dad gave me a random map without telling me why. Turns out, it was a Europe Map.
He told me, the next day, “I know you always want to travel around the world, I gave you that as your first step to reach your dream. That’s how mind power works. Go mark your favourite country at Europe! They will bring you to there”. I thought at that time, “Well, that doesn’t make any sense but yeah i’ll do it and put it on my wall”. The sixteen-year-old girl never imagined that she’s getting closer to her dream day by day.
Who knows? Three years later I was having a chance to try a volunteer experience in Hungary. It’s something that i couldn’t imagine before, going abroad by myself and staying there for two months without any expecation. Solo travel has been in my mind since I was a kid, so I was more excited rather than felt pressured with that upcoming opportunity.
You will discover how much you are capable of.
While travelling with group seems more fun, exiting, and safe, solo travel helps you a lot to learn so many things that you’ve never expected, before you try it by yourself. The most important thing is you will know yourself better. Of course, travelling without tour agent or company is more risky and challenging. That’s how you start to develop yourself little by little. It pushes you to take every move, decision, and get through every obstacle all by yourself. You will discover how much you are capable of. You learn to trust youself, because at the end, this is your life. We tend to cave in to social pressure to feel, act, and think in certain ways. It’s a chance to take care of yourself while doing a solo travel. Getting yourself used to think about what you really want in your life and things that make you happy, will help you understand that you are your own person. It’s you who created your own reality in life not other people, even society.
As a backpacker traveller, I liked to spend weekend for one day trip to another countries around Hungary. My bus or train mostly arrived early in the morning, or even at 3 AM when I was visiting Prague. I had to wait for the sunrise at the station before I started my trip. There were so many homeless people and drunk me. They kept following and bothering me because I was alone (and the only woman at that time). I was scared as hell but managed to keep my straight face and tried to ignore them. Fortunately, there was another guy that helped me and asked me to stay with him for a while. He also explained to me how to exchange my ticket and recommended me some place to visit. Thanks to that experience, I discovered the new side of me, learned to control myself, and overcame my fear (because I tend to get panic easily).
It’s not a big thing, but you make big thing out of little things sometimes.
Another thing that I love from being alone while wandering over the town is appreciating every little things more than I used to. I worked for people with disability at Perbal, small town in Hungary. I helped them to do their daily task, taught them some new skills despite their disabilities. It’s kinda hard for me to speak with them because they didn’t understand English and it’s hard to speak for them. But it brought me so much joy to be able to understand them through sign, drawing, or just jamming to some music together. They always said “Szeretlek” which means “I love you” for every little things that I did for them like joined them for afternoon walk, helped them for breakfast, cooked some Indonesian food for them, or simply played with them. All my neighbourhood was very kind too, whenever I took a walk around the town, they greeted me with smile and asked how’s my day even though barely knew the language (English). Living in a small town is very different from my hometown. I had never spent some time to take a walk here in my own place, but at Perbal, I took a walk almost everyday just to stargaze at night, or played with the snow and enjoyed the view. I learned that every place that I visited or new person that I encountered has their own story to tell. It’s a bless I could try firsthand experience.
Being alone means being aware to our surroundings more than before. Rather than trying so hard to communicate between the language barrier, we start to understand emotions, tone of voice, and body language more. We learn to understand and compassionate towards the other. Tolerance is one of the most important thing in life and not everyone knows how to do it. Solo travel is one of the thing that you should try before, you will gain a wordly sense that allows you to connect with people and places around the world.