5 Reasons You Should Travel Solo

Natalia Andersson-Laing shares her top 5 reasons she chose to travel by herself and why it isn't as scary as it sounds ...

1. You Can Easily Meet People

Whether you're in hostels, bars, or visiting the local sights, fellow travellers are everywhere. It is so easy to meet people when travelling especially if you're going to well established backpacker locations.

In these well-known places, there are set routes for travellers for example up and down the east coast in Australia and you'll find that you'll bump into people doing a similar route to you which makes it effortless to see the same backpackers you did a few days ago.

It happened to me on several occasions, in South East Asia and Australia, it was nice to know you would meet people again along the way.

2. Freedom

Travelling can be exhausting and when you're backpacking its good to do it at your pace. You can spend as much time at a sight, place, country as you want, you could change your mind of where to go, its a great luxury to have, not to be reliant on other people and their schedules.

The amount of times I changed my schedule, whether it was I wanted to stay longer in a place or heard some bad reviews about another town so I skipped it out.

3. It Isn't as Scary as it Seems

I got told a lot by friends, or saw on the media, that places aren't always safe and especially as a woman you're more at risk of being targeted.

This is not the case, of course you have to take precautions wherever you go there is a risk everywhere for everyone. Especially in tourist places the risk is so minimal and over exaggerated.

When I was travelling around places such as South Africa which has a reputation for violence and targeting women, its still true there are areas of South Africa which are inevitability dangerous, but the backpacker routes don't go to those areas.

A lot of people have visited these destinations before you, the routes are established for backpackers and are most of the time safe.

4. Unpredictability

When travelling you're always in positions and situations you don't expect to be in, like the train lines going down so you have to go somewhere else or our bus got stuck in traffic in India for 5 hours, it puts your plans on hold but you overcome them, or sometimes you find yourself doing things you don't expect to do and find yourself somewhere you didn't think you would.

Its not unique to travelling alone but the way you can deal with the situations, can make your experience better and make yourself feel better about how you dealt with things alone.

5. Easier

Life is so much easier when you're travelling alone, you don't have to wait for people, waste their time or yours. Instead you can think about their needs what you wanna do and when and just get up and do it, if you're morning person you can do things to suit that or vice versa.

By Natalia Andersson-Laing