When I was 21 years old I took my first-ever solo travel trip, a nine-week “backpacking” trip through Europe.
It was amazing. I had a youth hostel card, a Eurail pass, a passport, and a backpack full of clothes and personal items. Nine weeks is a long time and I travel from Amsterdam to the southern tip of Turkey, often traveling alone and sometimes with people I met along the way. It was educational and fun but also scary and lonely.
What Is Solo Travel?
My first trip to Europe is certainly one form of solo travel, when I planned and executed the entire vacation on my own. However, this is not the only way to do solo travel.
You can travel solo but provide a little structure into your vacation by booking a cruise or a beach resort vacation. I would also consider it solo travel when I traveled to Germany to work in an internship or when I traveled to Thailand to study abroad. Both these ways of traveling solo provide a lot more structure than just backpacking through Europe.
Solo Travelers on Tours
The first organized group tour I ever did was a bicycle tour in France organized for solo travelers. I was very leery of joining a group – both because I was used to being free to make my own decisions and because I was nervous about joining a group of people I did not know. However, the tour turned out to be fantastic. The structure was just enough and provided me with plenty of freedom to make my own decisions. And the group of travelers – all of whom were Americans and Canadians – made the trip incredibly fun. I was sold on group travel and eventually started Zephyr Adventures. But it was being a solo traveler on a tour that introduced me to this way of travel.
Benefits of Traveling Solo on a Group Tour
- Safety: A primary reason for many solo travelers is safety. You will not be taking overnight trains, hiking through the woods, or wandering the streets of Paris on your own if you are with other travelers and professional guides.
- Structure: There is certainly a romance to traveling through a foreign country entirely on your own. But it can also be difficult. By joining an organized group tour you won’t have to select hotels, book restaurants, or figure out bus and train schedules on your own.
- Companionship: Another major benefit of joining a group tour for solo travelers is the companionship you get from breakfast through dinner. It is simply not that fun to eat in restaurants by yourself, three meals a day for your entire vacation.
- Fun: For me, the biggest factor in solo travel on a group tours is simply the fun. Honestly, this is true for all our tours no matter who you go with, but solo travel can be so much more fun when you are sharing laughs, stories, and even hardships together with the rest of the group. What is interesting is that many people who have never done an organized group tour avoid them because they think they will have more fun on their own; but my experience is the opposite.
- Friends: It is more true than not that people on our tours make friends with whom they keep in touch, often planning future travels together. For solo travelers, this can be an amazing benefit, as a group tour pays off multiple times into the future.
For More Information About Solo Travel
Solo travelers are enthusiastically welcomed on any of our public tour dates. If you are a female traveler looking for an adventure, consider the Beartooth Hiking for Women tour and enjoy shared experiences, empowerment, support, and a lot of fun. If you are interested in traveling entirely solo, Lonely Planet has a good summary of 20 things you should be considering.