Traveling solo doesn't always mean you'll be lonely.
Credit: TIME
When I started telling people I was going to Mexico for a week, everybody’s first question was the same: Who are you going with? When I said I was going on my own, their reactions were all very similar. “Wow, that is very brave of you!” “Aren’t you scared?” “Will it be safe?” “Alone? I could never do that.”
It’s 2015. Women have made strides in politics, in business, in tech, in culture. But even those friends I considered forward-thinking questioned my decision to travel by myself.
My trip wasn’t even as courageous as it could have been—after all, I wasn’t truly by myself, at least not once I arrived in the small town of Puerto Morelos. I booked a weeklong yoga retreat through The Travel Yogi, a company that creates adventurous albeit relaxing yoga retreats all over the world. I didn’t have the typical concerns of finding a hostel or making friends, but still people who learned my plans seemed baffled.
Credit: Lily's Bridal
As a single 26-year-old living in New York, I was sick of seeing my friends with significant others post photos of incredible journeys. And any time I tried to get a group together for an exotic trip, it was too difficult to nail down a date—and especially a price—that worked for everyone. So when I found this trip, where I’d stay in a beachside boutique hotel that held daily yoga classes and served delicious vegetarian food, I didn’t check with anyone, I just booked it.
I’ve been quite a champion at being independent: I live by myself in a studio, I’ll go to Broadway shows by myself, I’ll see movies at times that work for me even if they don’t work for others. But taking this leap felt much different. And my friends’ reactions made me feel like they felt bad for me, like I had no one to travel with.
“I think people are afraid of looking like a loser,” says Kristin Newman, a TV writer and author of the travel memoir What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding. “It’s the same how people don’t want to eat dinner alone. I think people are afraid of being lonely, of being scared, of looking like they didn’t have anybody.”
Credit: allaboutloveandrelations.blogspot.com
She’s right—a thousand questions weighed on me when I landed. Even after I met the people at my hotel who I’d be spending time with, I went to bed thinking, “What am I going to do with myself all week?”
Well, I’d be meeting locals and eating dollar vegan tacos, watching men chop open coconuts with machetes to make fresh coconut water, getting massages on the beach, snorkeling with barracudas and lobsters and eels, diving into freshwater caves, spotting spider monkeys in trees, reading in a rooftop hammock, sipping micheladas on a regular basis and making incredible new friends. Despite all my fears, I’ve never felt less alone than when I was traveling alone.
Read more at TIME.