I hope you can excuse the long quote. It is from possibly my favourite book of all time, ‘A Whole Life’ by Robert Seethaler which I read at age 19 whilst backpacking through Europe. I can’t remember exactly where I picked it up, most likely in a hostel book exchange where I left one finished book and picked up another at random.

Robert Seethaler, ‘A Whole Life’

When you’re backpacking, every additional item carries a weight that holds you down. Even when not travelling, I rarely hold on to books because a) they are heavy, and b) books deserve to be read, not hidden away on a dusty shelf or the bottom of a bag. Most hostels have a little shelf or box somewhere for an easy exchange. I love these, the way you take a book, read it on the road, add your name, a date, and a location to the first page, and drop it somewhere totally new.

Jessica, Aug 2016, Krakow to Prague

But this book I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave. Something about the slow passing of time in a small mountain home, watching the World go by, embracing insignificance, was singing me a lullaby reflection of a change within myself. That summer I had taken my first-ever solo trip to Peru, then backpacked through Europe for several months. It had been a fundamental shift in self and I knew even then that I was unlikely to live a settled life. Solo travel was the biggest, bravest, scariest adventure of my young life, and it may sound hyperbolic but it changed absolutely everything. You can read more about it in From Screen to Page: How I Rewrote my Story.

8 years later, I am so proud to say that I embraced my traveller’s soul and have experienced so many unbelievable and beautiful adventures from hiking Machu Picchu, to staying in a remote hut in Borneo, camping under the stars in New Zealand, and seeing the sunrise over Angkor Wat. I’ve had success in travels and I have had failures. There have been dangers, mistakes, and countless missed opportunities, but not once have I had a lasting regret about the lifestyle I have sacrificed so much to chase. Many of these things you can read about in detail here on my blog, but I’d love to take this post as an opportunity to indulge in everything Solo Female Travel.

I want so badly to inspire other young women to take just one trip alone, so please find below a list of lessons that this nomadic life has taught me so far.

Do you know yourself at all?

When I first landed in Cusco, Peru I was an extremely lost 19-year-old student between my 1st and 2nd years of University. Up until that year, I would have described myself as outgoing, driven, sociable, and motivated…and then I started uni. I didn’t love my degree, I couldn’t picture my future, and to be totally honest, I had just been dumped. My fast-paced, focused life had been thrown into a disarray of turmoil and so one night in May I had booked a trip to Peru just desperate to run away and be somewhere, anywhere, but home.

In Cusco, life was slow and quiet. Yes, I went on amazing hikes, tours, and treks, but the day-to-day was still slow in a way I’d never experienced before. I didn’t have internet or wifi, no uni papers to write or projects to ‘get stuck in on’, there was just me and Peru. I spent a lot of time thinking, whether it was whilst exploring the city or during the most challenging hikes of my life, I let myself slowly unpick the knots and tangles of my mind.

I had always believed I did not like myself. That I would change everything if I could. But in Peru, it was different. Everything I did was an achievement of my own accord. No one I knew had ever been to South America, and I had never been anywhere remotely similar before. Away from normality and learnt-response, all I had was my instinct and gut reaction. I felt that for the first time, I was experiencing my truest self. Not the version of me edited by education, social pressures, and expectations. It was liberating.

It took some time but I eventually decided that being with myself wasn’t so bad after all, that maybe I even liked to spend time just with my mind, that I wasn’t an extrovert at all but an introvert trained by life to never stop.

After a month in Peru, I returned home to England and decided I wasn’t ready to stop just yet. Instead of staying home, I took the rest of my scholarship money and savings and took off backpacking in Europe, totally alone. There are plenty of ways to meet friends and make travel companions when backing solo as you’ll read below, but the truth is that you will still be alone a lot of the time. Long bus rides, empty hostels, or day trips no one else wants to join allow for hours with nothing but your thoughts. And after 3 months of finally listening to myself, I realised I was completely different to my external presentation. I realised that I not only liked this version of me but loved her. Loved me. And that if I was going to give dedicated time to someone else they must at least be as good as I was or I’d be wasting my time.

Imagine a desk. It is messy with scattered paper and spilt paperclips and pens missing their lids and you can never find a thing. That was my mind. And by the end of that summer, my desk was tidy for the first time in a long time. It was perfect, none of the issues or problems had been removed, but I could at least see them clearly. I understood what was happening, and I was ready to get to work.

To Plan or Not to Plan

That trip around Europe was 8 weeks of learning with a lot of fun sprinkled in along the way. It was my first time backpacking and to be honest I had no idea what to expect. Before leaving I planned an entire route starting in France, up to Poland, then all the way down to Croatia. I allowed for 4 nights per stop and had pre-booked buses and trains because I thought it would make the experience easier and less stressful.

This turned out to not be exactly correct.

As I travelled and met other backpackers I found myself wishing time after time that I had left more flexibility in my plans. They shared stops I’d never heard of, cities I’d have loved to see, and invited me to join them on their adventures with endings I’ll never know. I quickly learnt that 4 days was more than enough in some places, and the tip of the iceberg in others. I preferred buses to trains, and discovered the hostel recommended by someone on the road always turned out to be better than the ones mentioned online.

I had a taste of freedom, and I wanted it all.

The following summer of 2017 I was off backpacking again, this time to South East Asia. I had a flight out to Bangkok, a date 3 weeks later to meet my sister in Ho Chi Minh, and a flight home from Hong Kong a few weeks after that. The in-between? Completely up to me. This was liberation. Before leaving I had read a bunch of blog posts and scoured the Lonely Planet website for ‘Must-Visits’ and a sort-of ‘aspirational itinerary’ and I did end up visiting a lot of these spots, such as Chiang Mai and Angkor Wat, but I also got to go to so many places I’d never heard of before. Pai, Koh Tao, Da Nang, I spent 2 weeks alone Island Hopping with a group of friends I’d met in Koh Phangan! Did I make mistakes? OF COURSE! The infamous 27.5 hours on a bus was one of the worst. But for each of those mistakes I learnt a lesson and I made a discovery.

What to plan before a backpacking trip: An outbound flight.

The real advice that I want to impart is this: Plan as much as you need to feel secure and leave the rest up to fate. Solo travel is an exercise in letting go and trusting intuition, and I promise you won’t look back.

Oh! And if you absolutely must return home, book the flight in advance. The last time I didn’t I ended up moving to New Zealand instead!

Loneliness and Friendship

Before becoming a Solo Traveller I was afraid of being alone. I grew up with a big and loud family, with someone to talk to never more than one wall away. I remember crying when I first moved out to university because I didn’t know when I would next get to hug someone. My life now couldn’t feel more different. Learning to love being alone was not something I had anticipated but turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons I could have walked away with. However, the antithesis of loneliness is also true when it comes to travel. What I discovered is how easy it is to slip into new friendships when out on the road. So many aspiring backpackers asked me about how to make friends abroad, and the honest truth is that it just happens.

Backpacking is without a doubt the easiest way to make friends as an adult. Every hostel dorm offers an abundance of like-minded people filled with courage and wanderlust craving to meet someone new. There are ways to optimise your chances of making friends, for instance intentionally staying in a ‘party’ hostel, or filtering options by their ‘Social’ ranking in apps such as Hostelworld. The typical backpacker paths are teeming with people who are probably heading in the exact same direction as you. All the time, I find myself with a travel companion or group for weeks at a time…a big solo travel secret is that so often the trips aren’t actually solo at all.

This can be true to such an extent that I will sometimes go out of my way to avoid new friendships for a few days at a time. As you’ve probably gathered, I find travelling alone to be one of the most enriching experiences out there and I try to go 50/50 on my trips, splitting time with others and time with myself. For example, I might meet a few people in a hostel and join their path for a week, then head my own way for the week after that. It’s all about balance, and learning that friendships come and go in the blink of an eye.

Especially when travelling, I’ve learnt to let go of relationships as easily as they enter my life. Most of these friendships won’t stand the test of time, no matter how many bunks you share or meals you split, and that in itself is beautiful. I’ve come to accept each path crossed for exactly what it is: fulfilling its unique purpose before dissolving back into the breeze to allow space for another.

I’ve also learnt how to cope when friendships don’t appear for long stretches of time. When I first moved to New Zealand, for instance, it took me months. I must admit that loving being alone doesn’t mean you don’t experience loneliness. In fact, some of the loneliest periods of my life have been whilst travelling. Not every day is easy. Not every day is fun. But, I know that friendships will come and that sometimes it’ll just take time, energy, and me pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. There are Facebook groups for Women Abroad, co-work spaces in most cities, and I’ve even made connections turning up to a bar and drinking alone. Plus, you probably have a phone or computer, a lifeline to those people back home who I promise would love to hear your voice.

Intuition is Everything

I have come to believe this sentence more and more over the years. As a solo female traveller, there are safety risks you have to be aware of. Here are some practical safety tips:

• Do not get drunk, it leaves you vulnerable and unaware, no matter how safe you might feel
• Have your location shared with at least two trusted people
• Don’t live post your location on Social Media, wait until you have moved on to the next location before publicly sharing photos or videos
• Hide your extra cash and valuables in sanitary pad wrappers
• Have a ‘get out of here’ budget at all times
• Trust your gut. If something feels wrong, get out of there.

You will have an intuition about the people you meet when backpacking. It might sound harsh, but if you have a negative feeling about someone, no matter how seemingly unfounded, create space between them and you. You deserve to feel safe at all times, and that should be a non-negotiable.

This is where the ‘get out of here’ budget can come into play. I have booked hostels that look great online but put me on edge in person. In the past, I would push through the discomfort and stay because I didn’t want to ‘waste my money’ but at the very least this resulted in a poor night’s sleep and a bad next day. Now, I always budget in a backup plan. Know how to get away from a spot whether that’s using public transport, walking, or calling a cab. If a country is mostly cash-only, make sure to have enough to cover a night somewhere else on you at all times so you’re never caught off guard.

These precautions might sound exhausting but they quickly become second nature and ensure you feel comfortable at every step of the trip. If you feel pulled to or away from something, trust that intuition, it will rarely steer you wrong.

What are you chasing?

Now in my late 20s, my backpacker lifestyle has slowed down considerably from 5 years ago. I now favour slow travel – spending longer periods in just one place to get to know the details. I don’t know if staying in just one place will ever be my perfect life, but, I also don’t need to keep running the way I used to.

I realised some time ago that I was using travel as the definer of myself. It represented my bravery, my strength, and my independence…who would I be without it? That was a new journey I needed to face. I explored this idea in Monday’s post What am I doing with my Life: Finding Purpose in Your 20s and I’d love for you to give it a read.

Tldr: Learning to love yourself when abroad is one thing, but learning to accept yourself no matter what is the true challenge.

No matter the length of your trip, at some point it will come to an end. You have to be ready to face ‘reality’ whatever that might look like. Find the things you love about yourself when on the road, look for them again when you are stationary.

Have you taken a solo trip in the past? Where did you go and what did it teach you? I’d love to read your answers in the comments below.