The 10 Worst Things About Backpacking Solo
Athens all to my lonely self
There are few things I love more in this world than solo travel. The freedom to explore the world with nothing but a backpack and an open mind on no one’s timeframe but my own sounds like paradise, but with this whimsical lifestyle comes a price. Yes, my carefully-curated Instagram often highlights the best parts of #nomadlife, but there’s a lot I ever-so-conveniently leave out.
Sure, the grittiness of “roughing it” can be easily glorified, but the mundanity, the anxiety, the exhaustion, the isolation, and the tedium of solo backpacking catches up eventually. Here are my least favorite things about living the dream…things which anyone considering embarking on an independent, budget adventure should consider before quitting their day job:
View from my solo road trip in Iceland. I took 2,549 photos that week, most of them while crying.
Waking up in a hostel on a morning I’d love to be social, only to find that everyone at breakfast is having a great time speaking fluently in a language I don’t understand.
Being so excited to see/do some tourist activity only to find out it’s exorbitantly priced and absolutely out of my budget. Or that it’s closed down and physically impossible because I could only afford to travel during the low season…aka the terrible weather season.
Getting in a two-hour line for something and having no one to pass the time with (I have lucked out with sociable strangers though!).
Bringing everything I need for the exact countries I’m visiting and nothing more, leading to situations like wearing hiking boots and zip-off cargo pants throughout Paris and lugging around a Winter jacket I haven’t needed in a month and won’t need for another month. (Could I easily solve this by sacrificing my fragile self-image as a free-spirited femme fatale and simply plan trips around weather and activity considerations? Jury’s out.)
No one to cuddle (re: claw in terror) while watching Guatemala’s Volcán de Fuego on a freezing cold mountaintop. Such a hard life.
5. BED BUGS. Especially when it means spending the entire next day in a laundromat alone. (More on that nightmare in a later post.)
6. Cost. Lots of things are cheaper solo, like finding budget accommodations (especially on Couchsurfing) and eating cheaply throughout the day without the mutual enabling of frivolous expenditures like THAT RESTAURANT RIGHT THERE COME ON LOOK AT THE PICTURES WE WOULD LOVE IT! But renting a car? Splurging on a private room? Forget it, unless you’re down to burn through your wallet or cut down the length of your trip.
Took this while along the train tracks from Auschwitz to Birkenau outside Krakow, Poland. Spending an entire day wandering the concentration camps alone is definitely not something I’d recommend for anyone who isn’t a sociopath.
7. Those days when you just don’t feel like socializing but also don’t want to feel lonely while everyone socializes around you. What is that? Homesickness? Maybe if I refuse to acknowledge it then it will go away and I don’t have to consider that living this dream life gets old every once in a while.
View from my makeshift bed in Reykjavík
8. Missing out a good chunk of time in a location because of classic budget travel sleep-deprivation. Like when I took a five-hour red eye flight from New York to Iceland and spent the first half of my day in Reykjavík sleeping in a cold rental car while waiting for my hostel bunk to open up. Or the time I arrived in London after a several-hour flight delay only to be greeted by a three-hour line at customs in the middle of the night, finally made it to my hostel at 5am, walked into a packed, musty room with obvious bed bug remnants on my mattress, hung out at a Starbucks until 8am until I could get into a last-minute nearby Airbnb which cost my entire London budget, and slept through my whole first of three days before dealing with the bed bugs I’d gotten at a hostel in Iceland beforehand. Still jealous?
A sweet, old Italian man doing his best at Svartifoss in Iceland
9. Realizing if I’d only arrived one day earlier or later, I’d have been able to get into that world-famous museum for free.
10. Having to rely on strangers with poor photography skills for any non-selfie photos. I know there are ways around this but I just don’t have the shamelessness needed to whip out a selfie stick or set up a solo photoshoot while a crowd fights to get around me for the exact same shot.
Which reminds me: My least favorite thing about traveling is recognizing that I’m a part of the giant hoard of tourists destroying the sanctity of nature/history/art/culture by forgetting to care more about the experience than the evidence of the experience. I’ve had more than a handful of Black Mirror moments—like looking around at the Mona Lisa and realizing that not a single person in the packed room was actually looking at it, but instead looking at their phone between their faces and the actual painting, or the similar occurrence in Vienna when a giant crowd rushed up to Klimt’s The Kiss, snapped a thousand photos, and ran off before stopping to give it a second glance, or the time I took my Apple Watch on El Camino de Santiago to “track my step count” and spent 560 miles walking through the most beautiful landscapes I’d ever seen while only a buzz away from being sucked back into the world of social media.
Too bad I didn’t get to go down to the water on my beautiful solo hike because I got LOST IN THE COSTA RICAN JUNGLE.
All of this aside, there’s nothing in this world worth trading for these experiences. There’s a reason travel becomes addictive, why it derails career goals/personal relationships/retirement funds. Solo, bare-bones travel pushes you to the brink in every way—obliterating the boundaries of your comfort zone and identity; forcing you to face yourself, your demons, your unabashed joy, and your place in the world. There are many, many paths to self-discovery and empowerment, and while I don’t believe something so traditionally privileged as travel is superior to any other path, I can say that it has been a primary, integral source of growth for me—as an brainwashed American, as a woman, as an artist, as a member of this infinitely vast yet shockingly interconnected planet.
A melt-in-your-mouth lunch all to myself among the chaos of Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar…for $2.50. Solo travel isn’t all bad.
I was once on a public bus at the edge of Poland, chatting it up with a backpacker who lives on the opposite end of the globe, when I found out five minutes into conversation that the two of us shared a mutual American friend. Since I began traveling a few years ago, I’ve had so many experiences like this. “Six degrees of separation” is real, if not an underestimate. The similarities between us far outweigh the differences, and provide the bridge for understanding so desperately needed by those of us who come from powerful (re: imperialist) countries.
Just me, on a solo road trip, surrounded by people on their honeymoon.
All of our communities are already so connected, so dive into the cultural exchange and allow yourself to be touched by lives that come into yours one day and leave the next. Trust that you provide the same richness for others and share with abandon. Maybe you’ll meet your next best friend in that three-hour line at Customs.
