“I was so much more aware of everything; my senses were really alive”; “I found myself talking to more, and very different, people”; “It really opened my eyes in so many ways”. All these are familiar phrases that I typically hear from people who have taken their first solo trip in the past year or so.
Solo travel is booming post-pandemic, with one Google Trends report in 2021 claiming that searches for the phrase were up 761%. It doesn't come as a surprise, as the trend had been curving upwards for years, and coming out of lockdown has only heightened our desire to get out in the world and live our best travel lives. Yet there is still a lot of ignorance around who the typical solo traveller is, with even the travel industry often using the word ‘single’ interchangeably with solo.
It never really has been just about young singles. When I took my own first solo trip in my 20s, I felt very adventurous until the day I came across a tiny, white-haired British lady who looked like she should be eating cream teas in Devon rather than hiking through the hills of northern Thailand. It was a wake-up call that solos come in all shapes and sizes, all ages, and can participate in any type of travel.
Most of my trips over the years have been solo, from business travel in my 20s (where I would often add on a couple of days to explore a destination) through to myriad trips for Wanderlust researching articles or attending conferences. I've experienced every type of trip covered in these pages, and what I have found - like the people quoted previously - is that I see more when I'm on my own.
It's so easy to be in an inward-looking bubble when we're with a partner, family or friends. But travelling solo forces us to look outwards, while giving us the headspace to be ourselves. What's more, it offers a chance to try on different personas, other than how people in our daily lives see us - parent, child, partner, work colleague, boss, whatever. I always find it fascinating when someone goes through the liberation of stepping outside their usual character while travelling. This is the joy of solo travel: it lets us see not just places differently, but ourselves too. And that's perhaps the most exciting thing of all.
Busting the myths
You have to be young
You can take your first solo trip at any age. Indeed, travel companies report a rising demand in middle-aged and silver travellers taking their first solo trip. Intrepid Travel have seen an 83% growth this year in women aged 50+ travelling solo. As their spokesperson explained, “Women in midlife seem to be very keen to have adventures, and they're not letting the fact that they don't have anyone to travel with hold them back!” Another good example is Journeywoman (journeywoman.com), a popular website for solo women travellers that has many still-active members over the age of 80.
You have to be single
Single and solo sometimes get used interchangeably, even by travel companies, but they are not the same thing. Many people who travel solo are actually in relationships, but it can often be that they have very different tastes and interests when it comes to travel, or it could be that one of them gets more opportunities to travel than the other. It may even be the
