For Those Enjoy Vacationing Alone

[The Penguin]

I'm interested hearing stories about those that do enjoy vacationing alone?

For myself, it started 4 years ago after I got my driving license. My first trip was hiking in Cape Breton for 4 days. Had lots of fun.

The following trip was camping alone for my first time for 8 days. It was one of the best trips I had in my life. Nothing beats a beautiful sunrise for my own birthday.

My last camping trip, I meet someone else also enjoy camping alone.

The thing I like the most doing my own trips is I don't need to obey anyone schedule. I'm looking forward for my next camping trip next month.

 

[hiraeth]

Travelling is about developing personal relationships with new places for me. I find travel companions to be distracting. I have to constantly be mindful of them rather than devote all of my energy and concentration to what I actually came to do, which is to get to know the place.

There are definitely situations where having other people is much more beneficial than not, or perhaps is even necessary for safety or technical reasons, but I am not that attracted to those types of travelling for now.

Most solo travellers talk about meeting other solo travellers on the road, and mention this ability to meet new people as one of their biggest draws to solo travelling, but I've never been any good at that. I don't start conversations with strangers.

 

[The Penguin]

There are definitely situations where having other people is much more beneficial than not, or perhaps is even necessary for safety or technical reasons

Very true. Because I enjoy hiking alone and sometimes can do up to a 20 KM trip in one day, there can be many risks happen to me.

One time I got lost on a trail and took me an hour to figure out how to get back on track. I do have GPS that records my tracks. Why it took me too long to get back on track is I read the GPS tracks incorrectly.

On a heavy rainy day, part of a trail got flooded. There was only 30 minutes left of the trail. If I would have walk back and took the path I started from, it would taken 2 hours. I was lucky have the phone number for the park but it took a while to find a good cell phone signal. They did got me 30 minutes later and helped me show me the route I was suppose to take.

Near the end of another trip, I met a guest warned me about ticks. Before I drove home I did found a tick on me and removed it. When at home, I taken a good shower and ensure their no other ticks on me. I was very lucky I had someone to warn me. I have recently learn their is spray and lotion to repel ticks which I'm buying for my next trip.

Despite all of these events, I continue to do these hiking trips alone. Despite many people told me about hiking groups, it would't work for me as I send lots of time taking many photos and videos. A 2 hour trail I might take 4 hours capturing all the content I want to capture.

I do try my best to think about my safety for my trips. Ensuring I have food, lots of water, first aid kit, GPS tracking, external battery pack to charge my phone and other stuff. I remember I cancel one of my hiking trips since I projected I would't have enough water for such a hot day. Another thing I think about for my trips is to finish before dark.

 

[hiraeth]

Yeah, you have to do very thorough research beforehand and be extra prepared for all kinds of situations, more so than going out in groups where the responsibilities and knowledge would be distributed throughout the group members. Be able to think on your feet and make decisions quickly if something does go unexpected, etc. They're all very good skills to have. How to survive in the wild. Something that most other species know and our early ancestors surely did. It's a shame that many in this generation have lost it.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

I prefer to vacation alone, my first solo trip was a standard beach/site seeing holiday in Greece, when I was 18, and I discovered that I loved not having to work with someone else's schedule or consider what someone else's does/doesn't want to do. After that I went to New Zealand for a year (to work, so not really a vacation, but I did travel around when I was there), then South Africa for a couple of months, a load more beach/site seeing holidays around Europe, a bunch of hiking trips around the uk, and this last year I have been backpacking around australia, new zealand, Indonesia, and I'm now in Madagascar.

I'm definitely not one of those solo travellers who enjoys meeting new people, I travel alone because I enjoy being alone.

 

[biblophile]

I love traveling alone. I like going to the city and spending all day by myself in an art or natural history museum. no one running ahead of me getting annoyed because I want to look at a piece of art for a half hour or read the signs on the museum display cases. I also like going to the zoo on my own, sometimes the crowds annoy me but I often get focused on something and hardly notice other people.