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By Michelle Kruger 
How long have you waited to take that European trip of lifetime? Whatever happened to that weekend excursion to the coast? Maybe your perfect vacation is a restaurant tour through Cajun country. Sometimes I think we shelve our traveling dreams because we don’t have the right person to drag along. Imagine striking out on your own, designing a vacation with no compromises and traveling solo for its own rewards.
Travel is a personal itch I can’t seem to completely scratch away. And for most of my twenties, whether I wanted to or not, I was going it alone. Granted, many of my travels were last minute escapes from bad relationships or cruddy jobs, but after more and more successful trips alone, I have become hesitant to bring a partner. Indeed, over the years, I have really learned to love being a traveler of one.
Slovakia, 1995
My first true experience traveling on my own was to the newly formed Slovakia in 1995, four years after its split with communism. I wanted to visit a former German teacher, an eccentric, brilliant woman who, after retirement, moved there with the Peace Corps. I was 25, and though I had previously traveled abroad, I had never gone alone.
Frau Schmidt’s letter to me was cheerful and simple, with an address in a small town called Trnava. Knowing that I would be in Europe for the summer, her only advice to me was a suggestion to enter the country through Vienna, Austria. Looking at a map, the distance from Vienna to Trnava was the length of my pinky finger. No problem! I assumed I’d be there in about three hours.
Then came the Austria/Slovak border. After enduring a two hour bus search by soldiers with guns, we were finally allowed entrance and within minutes, the whole world seemed to change. Women in hand knit scarves walked the badly paved roads, crumbling castles and ancient buildings decayed along the hillsides and animals drove more carts than diesel. After ultra-modern Germany and sophisticated Vienna, I was entranced by the haunted and stunning landscape that could have been a movie set for The Princess Bride. If I had only known then what I still had to go through to get to my destination.
Eventually we arrived in the capital of Bratislava where, after some wandering around a deathly quiet square overgrown with weeds, I found a taxi. But I couldn’t seem to communicate with the driver. He let me off on a deserted street. Somehow I found another taxi; this next guy understood a bit of my German and took me to a hotel. There, the hotel manager, after never having seen a credit card before, insisted I was trying to rob her. I walked out and hailed taxi #3, which took me to a station where the resting trains looked like they had been built in World War I (later, my teacher told me they probably were). I bought a one-way ticket for a train leaving in 30 minutes. After a six-hour wait under a lone lightbulb-lit platform, I begged taxi driver #4 to take me to any hotel regardless of the cost as long as they took Visa.
A Girl Walks into a Bar…
The following morning I overcame my intimidation of the solemn faced Slovaks and asked a man at a bar (my mother’s worst nightmare and NO I’m not recommending this!) what to do. In halting German, he told me to try traveling by bus. Taxi number—I’d since lost count—dumped me at the bus station where I had to decipher timetables in a foreign language employing a different alphabet than my own.
For eight full hours I rode a bus and had no idea if it really was taking me to Trnava. At the end of the line, I slumped into the final taxi and crossed my fingers that the address I handed the driver was at best, readable. I arrived at a dismal grey high-rise and, after a 45-minute wait as the sun was setting, the best 73 year-old sight in the world walked up to me and said, “Michaela, how ever did you get here?”
Twelve years have passed since then and I’ve never been so changed by a mere 48-hour experience. Buying my first house (alone), purchasing and selling cars online (without help) were later experiences made so much less frightening because I knew that I had survived not just the transit system in a country with a language barrier and an alien alphabet, but also a culture unknown to my western (and rather suburban) upbringing!
Challenges & Risks
Traveling alone when you have no one to trust except yourself can be challenging and sometimes risky, but is also one of the most powerful, rewarding experiences you can have. Kari Hegstrom, 36, a school psychologist, says that the most empowering experience of her life was getting on a plane alone and traveling to Europe to visit a friend. She was terrified of the unknown—she had never traveled anywhere by herself—and had never been to different country. The experience was “exhausting and scary” but “the coolest thing I’d ever done.” Looking back on it, she’s convinced it made her know that she’d never have to settle. “I can do anything, I’m not going to wait for someone else to do [with me] what I want to do today,” she stressed.
Now a frequent business traveler, Kari makes a point to do something special whenever she’s in a new city. On a recent free afternoon in Boston, for example, she went on a self-led cell phone walking tour—using sidewalks marked with painted footprints—and followed a map narrated by Boston native and Aerosmith lead singer, Steven Tyler.
Benefits and Boredom
The benefits of being a traveler of one far outweigh any potential drawbacks, but if you worry about boredom or are a social butterfly, why not choose a group designed to meet your ideas of fun, adventure and fellowship, rather than wishing you had the perfect partner who wanted to do the same things you do?
During her MBA program at Berkeley, Carmen Juszczyk, who was 30 at the time, joined a group tour specifically because she wanted to be with other people and not be on a date. On a whim, Carmen signed up for a 12-hour bus trip to the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. It was, “a hippie tour all the way. The people who normally signed up for this tour, once it was over, were undoubtedly headed toward the next Grateful Dead event.” A world away from the high-pressure relationship environment of college MBAs, the group slept outside in tents, peed on the side of the road and had crazy adventures where, “you could just forget about there being any first aid.” Signing up, she thought it’d be a safe way to have a wild time. Looking back, she’s shocked at how unpredictable much of the trip was, but she wouldn’t trade the memories. In fact, she’s taken more group trips over the years, many of them camping and hiking tours—a respite from her day-to-day corporate culture.
Singles Cruises?
As a single, you may have thought about taking a single’s cruise. Many solos find they are a bit turned off by the subliminal suggestion that these cruises are matchmaking tours. “If I meet someone traveling and it turns out we really like each other, great—but I don’t want to join up with a bunch of people whose sole purpose of the vacation is to find a date,” says Kari Hegstrom.
There are numerous sites online that are dedicated to “singles vacations.” Whole cruises, resorts and big name tours are marketed to the “single” crowd. But be warned, most are designed for people who are actively looking to fall in love, or more probably, fall in lust. Many of these have the hint of yuck and a reputation as nothing more than a hook-up vacation club.
That kind of solo travel is not what I’m talking about. Ok, ok, on every trip I’ve taken there were times when it did get pretty darn quiet, just me and my backpack, and I remember thinking to myself, “it’d be nice to share this with someone.” But of those potential someones that I was most likely to have shared my solo trip with—romantic crushes, flirty friendships or short-term boyfriends—none ever lasted the 12 years that have brought me to this point in my life. But I still have my memories and pictures, and those I can share with anyone in my future.
Group Rewards
Budget conscious single travelers who want the camaraderie and fun of a group trip can find great deals and any kind of travel under the sun by searching the web. Trek America has its own well-advertised section called Singles Travel & Solo Travelers, designed after realizing that “over 70% of our trekkers are young single travelers joining their treks alone,” says Suzanne Stenquist of Trek America. The company markets and designs treks specifically for the traveler of one in mind, with small groups of no more than 13 people. With tours in North and South America, New Zealand and Australia, you can choose walking, camping or not-so-roughing it tours with full lodging.
Just making the decision to strike out in a group without someone you know can be liberating. A guy who’s always liked road trips and loved biking, Doug Byrne, 31, and a final year law student, had always wanted to see Maine. Says Doug, “I was single at the time and I wanted to do something fun and thought to myself, ‘I'm not going to refuse do something I want to do out of social-wimpyness.’ Sometimes you have to go on vacation! I'm not going to sit around waiting for a quorum.” (I think that’s law talk for a consenting group.)
“I went on a week-long biking trip organized by a local club,” Doug added. “They portage your camping gear and meet you at the next stop.” Several years later, this has become his never-miss annual trip. “I always come back recharged from active solo vacations. I think when you travel with a significant other or friend you bond with that person, but when you travel solo you bond with yourself and the place you are in. You avoid having someone to blame if you are not having a good time.
What about a solo vacation that’s a gift to someone else? Global Volunteers, based in St. Paul, Minn. sends people on service vacations where they volunteer to help at-risk people abroad and at home. About two-thirds of their volunteers are solo travelers and of that number about half are single. President and co-founder, Bud Philbrook, said of his service program, "For single people, [it’s] is a wonderful way to travel. Not only will you find instant companions among your fellow volunteers, but you will also experience the soul-satisfying joy of serving your fellow human beings and learning about the world's fascinating cultures.”
After Hurricane Katrina hit, Mariko Davis, now an author and full-time step-mom to step-daughter Alayna, felt she couldn’t not do something, so she left her last year of college in California and set out on her own to assist victims at a shelter, “We worked 20 hour days with a single day off—which we spent handing out food and water in New Orleans. The group of people I worked with were some of the most amazing I have ever met. We were all passionate about helping others, and I have never felt such a strong bond with a group of people since.” What she learned from her trip shapes her life to this day, “Working at the shelter taught me a lot about human love and perseverance,” she says, “and how small I am and powerless, yet desperate to do something.”
Travel for Two
Some circumstances make traveling solo a bit of a risk, but don’t let risk take away your dreams of adventure. Venturing out with someone else you know only casually—but with whom you share a common desire—can open seemingly inaccessible doors. Traveling with an acquaintance, fellow student or business colleague is vastly different than planning a trip with a loved one, close friend, family member or significant other. Joining forces with someone as a way to do something you couldn’t on your own is also a source of empowerment. Instead of sitting back and saying, “I simply can’t travel to that country or go rock climbing or pay full price for the taxi,” find another person who has the same interest and suggest that an ordinarily unmanageable excursion is possible if you partner up and share costs or information.
This was true of two women, Jessica Krueger, 27, and Courtney Cooper, 28, who were in Israel for a two-week program on security and conflict in the Middle East. Casually acquainted through a shared graduate program, they both privately wanted to explore beyond what their group activities included. Deciding to rent a car together, they drove south through the Negev desert to Eilat ("the Vegas of Israel"), a resort town on the Red Sea. From there, they ventured on foot into Jordan via the Arava Border Crossing. Sharing her adventure in an e-mail journal, Courtney wrote:
After hiking up to the highest view point in Petra, we struck up a conversation with a local vendor/beaudoin, and expressed our interest in camping in the desert of Wadi Rum that evening. On a whim, we decided to hike down the back side of the mountains with this fellow, and then went to his home and had tea with his old mother. From there he took us to Wadi Rum, and we camped with beaudoins in Lawrence of Arabia's old stomping grounds. The next morning we woke up to freezing temps, but were able to watch the sun rise over the desert, a beautiful sight.
Looking back, her travel partner, Jessica, reflected, “I would have been nervous to do all those things in that country as a woman traveling alone—the camping, tea with the beaudoin’s family, the sunset. Without a travel companion, I would have missed all that.”
Keeping it Close
But when you do strike out solo, it’s not like you’re ever completely alone. Bring your loved ones close to your thoughts by writing, e-mailing or text messaging photos and you’ll feel connected over the distances. After the death of my grandma, my mother gave me a letter I had sent grandma with a picture of myself staring out over the South Dakota badlands in a red cowgirl hat (Madonna’s cowgirl video was really hot that summer!). She had saved the letter in which I wrote how afraid I was during a thunderstorm spent in my weather-pummeled tent, but how the beauty of the morning’s sunrise, with its palatial purples, lavenders and golds comforted me after that long, sleepless night.
My memories now are only of the drama, my fear and the breathtaking sunrise. If I did sense loneliness in the moment, I didn’t take it with me into my present. It could be that I simply don’t remember that I was lonely. Now that photo rests high up on a cabinet in my living room and when I look at it, I think, “wow, how cool. I have to get back there sometime” and “jeez, when was the last time I could fit into those jeans?”
Traveling solo is its own sojourn.
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