On Traveling Alone
By Mia Baumann
Leaving your comfort zone is hard. Especially if you are leaving your home to another continent, not knowing when you are coming back. But how do you grow as a human if you are not challenging yourself to be on your own for a longer period of time? So this is my story of looking for happiness in being alone but not lonely. And a little survival guide I call: How to Not Go Insane While Hanging Out with Your Own Mind.
My journey started little as 2 months ago, when I left my country, Switzerland. I moved out of my parents’ house, packed my life in two boxes, and left home with my 40L backpack for good. The first few weeks were pretty exciting, as they should be. I saw a whole different culture and tasted different dishes in Mexico. I met some pretty dope people and traveled with them a little while.
So far so good. But with time, I felt a heaviness in my belly. There it was. Homesickness… which I hadn’t felt since I was nine years old, missing my mom while attending a school camp.
And, as you do when you start missing something or someone, you start to compare everything to that. You start telling yourself how you don’t understand anyone, that everything works differently, and that you can’t handle the spices. I also felt this sudden feeling of escaping. That the whole idea of being independent and an adult is bullshit and that I should fly home immediately.
So what do you do in this situation? What do you do when you are alone and you have your only own mind to communicate with?
Well first of all… Breathe.
It’s quite simple, I know, but it helps. It calms you down if you feel overwhelmed or feel like everything is just too much. Meditating is also a very good way of sorting your thoughts out. It helps to take all these thoughts and process them as individuals instead of as one big chunk of messiness in your head.
Then, instead of pushing those feelings away, which is so unhealthy anyway, try really to feel. Miss those people, think of them, and send them as much love and light as you can.
When you’ve had your moment, it’s time to get better. For me, that meant having the most awesome dance party ever in my hotel room. Listening to Spice Girls, Nicki Minaj, and, of course, Beyoncé. The whole program. You always feel better with these women hyping you up, believe me.
I still miss my family every day, but I get more and more comfortable being with myself. And at the end of the day, I am on the biggest journey you can conquer. Life. That sounded way too philosophical, but it is true! No matter how much you twist and turn it, life is a big adventure. With that, there are some steep hills you have to (and will) overcome.
I also wanted to share all the benefits of solo traveling, because there are way more of those than disadvantages, and I don’t want to make this article depressing. Here are a few:
You can do whatever the fuck you want
I don’t have anything or anyone to rely on. Want to go bungee jumping in Costa Rica? Absolutely. Bar hopping in Mexico and be hella drunk at 3 pm? Count me in. Do literally nothing and let your soul free for a week in Guatemala? It’s a yes for me. You are your own boss for once. No one can tell you what to do. You are responsible for one thing and one thing only. Staying alive and having a hell of a time.
While traveling, you are stretching time
I have no idea how the theory of relativity works, but what I do know is that time literally slows down when you travel. As I wrote in this article, I’ve only been on the road now for two months, but it feels like I repeated the whole missed year of 2020. I experienced so many adventures in this short time, and I am so excited for the next ones.
You meet a lot of people. Like a LOT.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. When you are solo traveling, you are never on your own. Heck, it’s sometimes hard to find alone time. If you are traveling like a “typical” backpacker, sleeping in dorms, cooking your own food, and doing all the typical tourist shit, then you are going to meet and be around so many people. You also will find out that the world is so fucking small. A few days ago I met two guys from the same little village as me, and we found out that their mother was my playgroup teacher when I was four! And we are currently somewhere in Guatemala where WiFi was introduced only a few years ago.
We do live on a little big planet. The people you meet traveling often have a similar mindset to you. So having a topic for a conversation is quite easy to find, because everyone is open to meeting new people. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be traveling in the first place. Also, with all the people you meet, you now have places to stay all around the globe (which is pretty dope if you ask me).
These benefits seem obvious, but the thing is, you’ll never know how much they will mean to you if you never try solo travel out. There are so so many more reasons to solo travel. You will learn lessons for life that no school can teach you. When you are old and grumpy you have some cool stories to tell, too. I mean, I will brag to my grandchildren someday that I worked at a bar in my bikini somewhere in Guatemala when I was 19!
Whether it is a solo world trip, a solo mini-vacay to Greece, or just a nice rendezvous with yourself in a fancy restaurant you couldn’t afford for two anyway. Traveling alone or even simply doing stuff on your own can be tricky, but you will grow as a person. I am so far away from managing this whole “adult” thing, but I know that I am not at the beginning anymore. I know that I stepped in the right direction with discomfort, but in the end, I found out that this is simply what growing up means.
Mia Baumann is a Swiss writer currently traveling through Central America.
