What Solo Travel Taught Me About the World

“Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because it extricates you from the values of your culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function. This exposure to different cultural values and metrics forces you to re-examine what seems obvious in your own life and to consider that perhaps it’s not necessarily the best way to live.” —Mark Manson

I’ve been travelling my entire life. But doing it alone was something different entirely. I left home at 18 and moved to France for the first time — didn’t know the language, barely knew the culture, knew no one there. I got sick two days after arriving.

Solo travel was stressful. And I kept doing it. Because it changes you in a way that nothing else can.

Here’s what solo travel has taught me about the world — and myself.

Confidence

Solo travel showed me I’m a lot more capable than I thought. I can get by without knowing the language. I can figure out public transport from scratch. I can push through anxiety when I need to talk to strangers.

I got out of difficult situations I never thought I could handle. And every one of those moments added up. That’s basically what building grit looks like in practice — putting yourself in hard situations repeatedly until you stop assuming you can’t handle them.

Minimalism

I used to hold onto everything. Most of my stuff had “sentimental value.” That lasted through my whole adolescence until solo travel forced a rethink.

Taking care of myself on the road meant keeping only what I needed and leaving the rest. It pushed me toward minimalism — and made me realize I value experiences far more than things. The alternative was dragging unnecessary luggage through every trip.

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Being Alone

I’m an introvert. I like my own company. Rarely feel lonely.

Except when I arrived in France and couldn’t communicate with anyone, didn’t understand the people or the culture. That’s when I felt lonely for the first time. Nobody around me spoke English and nobody showed much interest in talking to me. I was in the suburbs — meeting people meant taking a train to Paris. I’d grown up in a small town and had never navigated a big city alone.

So I pushed myself. I took the train. I wandered through Paris on my own, ate in restaurants alone, until I’d seen everything and just spent afternoons lying in the grass watching the Eiffel Tower. And I genuinely enjoyed it. Once I felt confident enough to go out and explore, the loneliness disappeared.

Making Friends

Meeting people is hard when you don’t share a language and don’t know how to approach them. When I arrived in France I wasn’t studying or working, so I had no natural way in.

I noticed people were more comfortable approaching me when I was alone. So I started going to parks and public spaces by myself — and friendships followed.

I also met people online, which terrified me at first. But I learned to find the right people, meet safely, in the right settings. There are plenty of other solo travellers on social apps looking to connect and explore together.

The World Isn’t as Scary as You Think

Don’t avoid a place because you heard it’s dangerous. Bad things happen everywhere, including your home country. And the media consistently overstates how risky a place actually is.

If you trust your instincts and do your own research, you’ll be fine most of the time. I’ve lived in and visited countries the media labelled too dangerous — and never encountered any of the dangers they warned about.

A lot of that fear comes down to the unknown. Travel is one of the fastest ways to shrink your fear of the unfamiliar — you prove to yourself, again and again, that you can handle what’s on the other side.

If you’re working through what’s holding you back, I’m here.