How to Overcome the Fear of Solo Travel
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Why haven’t you traveled solo before? Is it because of fear and anxiety? If you answered yes, you are not alone. Fear and anxiety are common when it comes to the topic of solo travel. In fact, both of your co-hosts of the Passports and Coffee Podcast experienced a sense of fear and anxiety before embarking on their first solo adventure. But we don’t think you should let your fear and anxiety hold you back from a trip of a lifetime. In today’s episode we are going to talk about how you can overcome the fear of solo travel with our 8 tips on how to conquer your fears while traveling alone.
Why is fear associated with solo travel?
Before we start talking about how you can overcome your fear of solo travel, lets first talk about why fear is associated with solo travel.
So what is the definition of fear? Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous. And unfortunately there is this stigma that traveling alone is dangerous. Solo travel is relatively safe as long as you are not putting yourself in a dangerous situation.
But with that being said, solo travel, more specifically, solo female travel does not always align with societal norms. Women are often times seen as fragile and different parts of the world find it odd to see a solo female traveler.
But over the years, the popularity of solo travel has increased. In 2019, a study found that 76% of travelers had either gone on a solo trip or are considering traveling solo. And guess what? Millennials represent the largest portion of those traveling solo at 58%. The main reasons for solo travel? The freedom and flexibility, escaping every day routines/responsibilities and the lack of having a travel partner.
All of these reasons are why we travel solo. As fellow corporate world millennials, we know all too well the stressors of daily life. But the older we get, we face other challenges, such as losing our travel partners in crime to husbands and babies. So collectively, we decided to stop waiting on anyone to travel with us and decided to start traveling alone and we are encouraging you to do the same.
For those of you who are considering solo travel, start by asking yourself why you want to travel solo. From there, ask yourself, what are your fears? Are these fears rational?
Today we ask you to forget about all of your preconceived thoughts of solo travel and learn how to overcome those fears to start conquering that bucket list that you have for yourself. So, let’s discuss our top 8 tips how you can conquer you fears of traveling alone!
8 Tips how to conquer your fears of traveling Alone
1. Be comfortable being alone
This first tip seems like a no brainer but honestly its a tip that some people overlook when they are thinking about traveling solo for the first time. Solo travel means spending a lot of time with yourself and you need to be comfortable with being alone. This may be a problem for our extroverts who thrive in group settings. If this is you, you will need to learn how to entertain yourself and how to be comfortable with silence and being alone. Which leads us into tip number two.
2. Start Small
Whether you are comfortable being alone or not, our second tip is a great way to ease into solo travel. We suggest that you start small. Before you embark on that large solo adventure, we recommend taking baby steps.
First things first, take yourself out to dinner. We know eating alone at a table in a foreign country can cause a lot of anxiety. So before you find yourself abroad, take yourself out to lunch or dinner in your home town. Start getting comfortable with being alone and eating alone.
From there, take a small local weekend trip. Local weekend trips are great because you are close to home with no culture shocks. It helps you get comfortable being out of your comfort zone while being alone.
If you are looking for a fun local weekend trip, we highly recommend Getaway House. Getaway House is a perfect weekend escape for our corporate world millennials. There are several locations throughout the United States located within 2 hours from major cities! Use this link for $25 off your first stay at any of their locations.
3. Take a trip that is not completely different from your culture
If you have never traveled solo before and you feel a sense of fear and anxiety with solo travel, we would recommend your first solo trip to be a destination that is not completely different from your own culture. If you live in a small town in the Midwest, choosing a country in Asia may be too much of a culture shock.
4. Research and Plan
One of the best ways you can help combat your fear and anxiety of an unknown area is to do research and plan. Before we take off on a solo trip we always research our destination and make sure we have an initial plan in place.
What should you research? How to get from the airport to your accomodation, the surrounding area where you are staying, public transit and what you want to do while you are there. Doing research will make you more confident. Having a plan will also ease anxiety. Now remember, this can be a loose plan and can be changed as you go but it will help you overcome those feelings of anxiety and fear when traveling solo.
5. Allow wiggle room in your plan
As mentioned above in tip number four, having a plan is important but sometimes your plan isn’t always executed as you had planned. Travel isn’t perfect and sometimes unexpected things happen or you find yourself in an area that you didn’t plan for and want to spend more time there. It is ok if this happens. That is travel! So we suggest that you allow wiggle room in your itinerary. If you don’t allow for wiggle room, it can cause more fear and anxiety.
6. Book a group tour or hop on a day trip with other travelers
Solo travel can be lonely sometimes and as human beings, we are naturally social. So sometimes you need that social interactive to thrive. If you are looking for some social interaction with fellow solo travelers we recommend booking a group tour or hop on a day trip with other travelers.
How do we find group tours and day trips trips? If you are looking to spend your whole trip on a group tour to ease in to solo travel, we recommend Intrepid. Intrepid has several different group tours to choose from that travel all over the world. The best part about this company is the tours have a max group size of 12.
Group travel with your favorite influencer, Instragrammer, YouTuber, etc. is very popular right now. I am sure at least one person you follow is putting on a group tour. This is a fun way to connect with someone you follow but also meet fellow like minded people. You can check out Trova Trip to see what influencers are putting on group trips.
Want to travel solo but you do not want to join a group tour for your whole trip? We suggest hopping on a day trip! We absolutely LOVE GetYourGuide! GetYourGuide provides a variety of day trips in locations around the world. We both have personally booked several GetYourGuide day trips and recommend it to all of our personal friends and family. Another option for day trips is to look on AirBnb Experiences. We have done several AirBnB experiences. While we were in Turkey we did a Turkish coffee culture and fortune telling experience which was absolutely amazing. Another fun AirBnB Experience was coffee tasting in Vietnam.
If you are traveling solo, we know how hard it is to get photos of yourself. So a fun thing you can do is meet a local photographer and have photos taken. Kayla did this in Croatia. You can find local photographers on AirBnB experiences. If you are looking for a photographer in Croatia, click here for Kayla’s amazing photographer!
7. Overcome the judgement
Solo travel is still a relatively new concept and not widely accepted in most cultures. We still get judgement for traveling solo but it’s something that you need to accept and overcome when planning a solo adventure.
One of the most common questions we get asked when heading on a solo adventure is “Why?” Kayla’s response is “Why, the fuck not?” We are confident in who we are and we know what we want to see and do in this world. And we are not going to wait on anyone to travel with us. Which leads us into our last and final tip.
8. If not now, then when mindset
Let’s face it, the older we get we begin to start losing the opportunities to just pack up and go. Not to mention the fact that we begin to lose our travel companions to marriage and children. So you have to ask yourself, if I don’t travel now, then when?
We ask you to change the way you think of travel. Yes traveling with a friend or significant other is fun. But that’s not always available. The older we get the availability of others becomes seldom. Also, I’m sorry to break it to you but if you are just sitting around waiting for someone to travel with you, they ain’t coming. So book that damn trip!
It is now the time for you to change your mindset. You are no longer 20 years old on summer break from school. We are now in our 30’s with careers and friends who have settled down. Things have changed and you need to change your mindset. If you want to travel, there will never be the right time. So we say start now! Book that trip and start living out your travel dreams!
We hope that we have helped you to take steps in overcoming your fear of solo travel. These eight tips that we have shared with you are ones that we have personally used to help us become more comfortable traveling solo and we promise these will help you to conquer those same fears of traveling alone.
Before we go, we want to leave you with this last piece of advice. At the end of the day, YOU will NEVER really be alone! So book that trip, hop on the plane and live the best travel life you can and who knows, you just might find your new travel bestie in a new far away land!
Thank you for listening!
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Passports and Coffee Podcast
Hi travel besties! It's Kayla and Cheraya, your co-hosts of the Passports and Coffee Podcast. We are fellow corporate world millennials looking to escape the 9-5 and are encouraging you to do the same.