Oh my god, that plan sounds amazing, but…are you going by yourself? That’s the reaction I got from a lot of people when I told them my plan to give up work and go travelling. I think a lot of the time it was purely a concern at my safety, particularly with my plan having so much time in India in it and all the horror stories you read online about travelling through India. But for myself and some of my close friends there was another worry about me being by myself. I’ve alluded on here before about some of the problems I’ve had with mental health and anxiety before and in my head they have always been related to when I’ve been alone and in moments of stress, which when travelling by yourself would happen. I’ve never had any huge problems, just times when I’ve been unable to understand myself and what’s happening, which always makes me feel like maybe my experiences aren’t worth sharing but also I think anything where you feel a disconnect between yourself and your mind is something that needs to be talked about. It’s taken me a long time to realise but the more you talk about things the easier they are to process which is slightly what this post is. My way of processing the change that has happened.
But anyway before I get distracted and this becomes a post about the ins and outs of the days when I’ve felt alone, overwhelmed and like there’s a big grey cloud in my head it was because of these past days that I was worried about travelling by myself. I’ve not spent much time alone in my own company, I have an incredibly supporting and loving family who even at 28 I still live with, a boyfriend who constantly supports and pushes me to be the best I can be and the most amazing group of friends who I share much more than prosecco with but because of this it means I am always surrounded by people, noise and stuff. In the final week leading up to my departure to India I began to get properly scared of how I would cope by myself. It wasn’t a fear of the unknown, I love travelling and discovering places, it was the genuine fear of being by myself.
Honestly though I needn’t have worried. During the eleven weeks I was away I learnt so much about myself, never once felt properly alone and only had one day where I felt a little down, which compared to when I was commuting to and working in London is incredible. I obviously met people along the way on my travels and while I was in Australia I was meeting up with old friends but even human contact aside, I think possibly for the first time, I felt properly happy in my own company. This trip was always going to be a little bit going away and ‘finding myself’, who goes to India without that in mind? But I discovered so much about myself.
Having the courage to sit with yourself and process what is happening in your mind is something we so rarely do. If I’m honest I don’t think I’d ever done it properly until I went away. There’s always a distraction at home, something that needs doing and by going away I felt I could free my mind. All that fear that I had about my mind not being occupied and in that case it being destructive was actually the opposite of what happened. When I stopped bombarding my mind with stuff and let it breathe it sorted itself. All the compartmentalised emotions and thoughts of the past three or four years put themselves together and made sense. The thoughts that normally make me anxious, made me calm because I had the time to actually sit with them and listen to what I was telling myself. The words I was using to describe myself suddenly became brave, strong and independent which has been my outward persona for a long time but not what’s been in my head. It’s sad that I had to get out of my day to day life to realise this but unfortunately I think its symptomatic of the current state of our lives, full of careers, pressures to be perfect,the internet, family, children, politics and the general state of the world. Sometimes we have to be quiet and realise that’s all that matters. In fact while writing this I got distracted by Instagram (obviously) but there on my screen was a post from Jillian Coogan, a student of the ashram I stayed at in Rishikesh, and it sums up everything my body and mind learnt while I was away, “We were born to be real, not to be perfect”. This is my new mantra!
That in a nutshell sums up my entire experience of solo travel. Yes it may be slightly scarier at times being by yourself, yes you only have yourself to fall back on but you can also open yourself up to everything and everyone you want to. There’s no checking whether someone else wants to do something, there’s no working to someone elses schedule and there is all the time to sit with yourself and your thoughts. I’m not going to share everything about myself that I learnt because there’s a lot there that I’m still working on but what I will share is part of one of my last journal entries that I wrote whilst sat in Bali. This was the culmination of my travels and the changes and improvements I’d made to my way of thinking. Sat there making plans for my return I was struck by my newfound bravery and courage. No fear of being alone, a quiet meditative, thinking mind.
‘Grab what you love, walk to the edge of the known and jump, feet first, full of hope and guided by love into the unknown. You won’t regret it’
To anyone who has ever been put off travelling by yourself I would say just go. Depending on where you’re going there are obviously more concerns about safety but that’s not a reason to not do it, just be more sensible. I’ve got a few tips that I either read before I went or picked up along the way, both for the mind and the more physical safety aspects too.
– Don’t be scared to take yourself to dinner – sure it might seem a bit weird at first asking for a table for one but honestly take yourself out for a nice dinner. Read your book, have a glass of wine and soak up the atmosphere in the restaurant. No one is actually staring at you (at first it will feel like they are but they’re not). Don’t feel like you have to exist on bed picnics in your hotel room alone
– Try and travel only during the day – safety tip rather than mind. When I was travelling entirely by myself this was a key one for me, particularly in India. Although I never felt unsafe I didn’t put myself into certain situations on purpose. I was very conscious that as a tall, blonde, white woman I stuck out like a sore thumb and got a lot of stares during the day. Although not often threatening I didn’t want to be in that situation by myself at night. Do the usual thing of researching your routes and ways home so if you have to travel at night at least you can do it with confidence
– Journal – use the time by yourself to just write. Write everything down, however small and it might help you discover yourself
– Dance by yourself – similar to taking yourself out for dinner but if there’s a gig you want to go to or an event on, don’t be worried about going by yourself. One of my favourite nights while I was away was I took myself to an amazing blues venue in Byron Bay, had a couple of glasses of wine and danced by myself to the most amazing live band. No holds barred. That night ended with two new friends and hanging out with the band at the end of their set, you never know what will happen
– Make sure people at home know your rough plan – just another safety tip in case anything did happen but people know roughly where you are, especially if you’re going hiking or something like that. It also means you don’t have to check in with everyone all the time which is great for calming the mind
– Buy a tripod – incase you’re a fellow yoga pose in places photography nut or you just like having photo’s of yourself in the places you visit, invest in a little tripod with a bluetooth shutter button. I found mine invaluable and it means you don’t have to always ask strangers to take photos of you
– Finally – If you do feel like you’re missing human contact book yourself on some kind of activity or tour for the day. You’re likely to have similar interests to the people on it because you’ve all chosen the same thing, you’ll learn something and you’ll have people to chat to about it
I really hope this has been interesting and hopefully helpful practically and mentally. I will be writing more about my experiences with anxiety and mental health in general because I really feel the more we talk the lesser the problem becomes and hopefully we break down the stigma. Also really selfishly, I find it cathartic! If you have any comments, suggestions or questions on anything solo travel and the mind related please do pop it in the comments below
Namaste x