As the plane touched down in Chile last Monday I was in tears. For the first time in 14 years since I began travelling on my own, I genuinely considered heading straight to the International Departures desk and booking a one way ticket home. It was massively confronting, upsetting and will no doubt transpire to be something that ultimately makes me stronger.
I’m a fairly head-strong and tenacious person but I’m also incredibly perseverant. To have an experience like this was unsettling. Here I was smack bang in the middle of every hesitation, fear and anxiety-inducing feeling I encourage other women to push through in order to see the world. The irony.
To be clear, this wasn’t a result of landing in Chile/South America specifically but instead a series of events that happened in the 2 months prior to me getting on the plane.
I’d recently spent 7 weeks in India. It was a country I’d expected to fall in love with and whilst I enjoyed my time there and generally had nothing but good experiences, two significant things happened to me. The first of which left me feeling a little…hmm…broken.
I ended up being sick for the best part of a month and was alone in hospital for 5 days of that. I also experienced the joy that can come from sharing travel experiences with someone significant to you.
Why are these things important and why did they have such an adverse impact on my confidence to travel solo and the usual mind set I adopt when doing so?
I’ll start with the easy one – the sickness/hospital stay. I’d never been sick in a foreign country before, let alone to the extent that I needed to be hospitalised and put on a heavy dose of IV antibiotics. I’d contracted some sort of superbug UTI which got progressively worse over two weeks and eventually led to vomiting, pain and intense fever.
At the time, I pushed through the hospital stay. It wasn’t hard, it wasn’t even particularly scary. It was just something I had to do. The staff were wonderful, the hospital was basic but ok and the treatment I got was great. In hindsight though, the experience of going through that alone, unexpectedly, seemed to settle somewhere inside me and create a nervousness of it happening again. This is partly due to the fact that when I returned home the UTI made a comeback and I spent another month on more antibiotics and treatment to shift it. In total I was ill, on and off, for nearly 2 months. When I wasn’t experiencing symptoms, I was nervous that they would return. It was exhausting and, as a result, I wanted and needed the comfort of others more than ever. I did not want to go through the pain of what I experienced in India again and certainly not alone. No thank you!
So…the more complicated issue – company. Whilst in India I met someone who it turns out was pretty damn important to me. It was unexpected, completely took me by surprise, split my emotions wide open and has definitely added a different dimension to me that is both a blessing and a curse.
Solo travel for me is something I cherish and actively seek to do but it would be wrong to deny that it was originally something that was an inevitability for me. Work, budgets and life stages of those around me meant that I always had to make a choice – wait for the stars to align in order to go with someone else (had I done this, I would never have gone anywhere…) or go alone (yaaassss!).
All these years later, despite my generally open character and the perception that I’m an extrovert, I often joke that I’m fairly ‘antisocial’ (for lack of a better word). Committing time to travelling with someone for more than a few days is something I would typically avoid. I spend and value a lot of time alone, will never surround myself with people just for the sake of having company and I HATE small talk with strangers, which can be a frequent occurrence on the travel circuit.
It’s a tricky one to explain but because I’ve never experienced the joy of travelling with someone that I’ve truly cared about (beyond friends for short weekends away), I’ve not been able to crave, miss or really have a view on the happiness it can bring with it. Sharing a part of India, and subsequent trips to Israel and Barcelona, changed this for me. Solo travel absolutely makes me happy but damn…travelling with someone you care for is a different kind of joy. Not better, just different.
Both of these things combined created a massive shift in me and it’s fair to say I did not handle it well. Before I left, people close to me were having to quote my blog back to me to build me up again. Telling me I’m only ever 24 hours from home, I can always come back, I don’t need to plan the end, just the beginning. I know they were right to do so, I know I trust my own advice, I know I enjoy travel, I know it always works out in the end, I know I am strong, resilient and capable but I just did not feel like it. Nah, not one bit. I was overwhelmed with anxiety and self-induced pressure (something I’m trying to work on).
So, as you may have guessed, it was an internal struggle to put one foot in front of the other to get on the plane. When I did, armed with emergency antibiotics and having left my ‘different kind of joy' behind, my mind was still racing – Did I want to go at all? What if I got ill again? Could I go through that alone again? Did I even want to travel solo anymore? (WTF!!???) Where should I start my trip? Where should I end it? Was three months enough? Was six too many? Arrrggghhh! It was mind-blowing. I’ve not experienced a knock to my confidence like it.
When I landed, I continued to put one foot in front of the other whilst telling myself ‘I can always go home, there’s no pressure from anyone to stay, you’ve got this for as long as you want and enjoy it, there’s no failure in simply changing your mind for once’. I was desperately trying to adjust my mindset to return to being the person I have been for so long.
Eight days into Chile and I am glad I got off the plane. I was from the moment I landed to be honest. Yes, India may have left me feeling a little broken but that’s not it’s fault, it was just circumstance and is not automatically reflective of how the rest of my time will be. In any case, I know I can get through a similar thing should it happen again, I just don't want to. In the meantime, I’m not going to carry the negative aspects of it with me into future experiences.
And as for the point of company, there is of course value in sharing travel with someone significant but there is still equal (even more) value in solo travel.
What I failed to remember, having indulged fully in all the joy of a shared experience, is that travelling alone is not lonely – again, it’s different but definitely not lonely. I was reminded of this within 10 minutes of landing – I met a girl at baggage claim, we got on really well, we had breakfast together, we got the bus to Puerto Natales together, and spent the day hanging out around town and helping each other book tickets for the W trek. From there, I met a man in my hostel room who had also just landed having done zero research. He downloaded my brain, we went for dinner and drinks together, and he donated his spare thermals to me so I wouldn’t be cold on the W trek – given he was 6’4” they looked a little ridiculous on me but I was assured they had seen him through many a rugby match safely. Although they were freshly washed, I could tell this was the case and that’s not because of the holes in them!
The W trek in Torres Del Paine introduced me to a group of 7 Israelis who found me quite funny (god knows why) and suggested I join them along the way. Long treks are typically more fun with other people and being ‘one of the boys’ for a few days was something I’m really grateful for because I could not have made it on the final day without their faith in me – I was certain I would take the average 9 hours to complete the trek to the three towers. They insisted I am faster than I think and could absolutely do it in 6.5. They were right – phew. When we got back to Puerto Natales, we bought 4kg of steak and cooked up a storm in their hostel. Coincidently, another person we met on the trek was there and his friend was more than happy to speak with me in French so I could practice what I’ve learnt in the last month.
But it’s not all about the fact that I’ve met so many people already, I’ve been reminded that I am actually very happy in and capable of enjoying my own company. Something I think I’d forgotten a little bit in the last few weeks.
Slowly I can feel my solo-travel-appreciating-self returning and I’m happy to see her. She’s a little wobbly and bound to have a few up and down moments as time goes on but that’s natural. I just need to love her through them and remember to be kind to her during the process.
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