Why Everyone, Especially Women, Should Travel Solo At Least Once
Mid-sabbatical tips and reflections on the glories of solo travel
I am approaching the halfway point of my one-year sabbatical. When I left my corporate job, my goal was simple: heal from toxic thought patterns and see what I would naturally gravitate toward without work pressures hanging over my head. I was excited to live without boundaries, which included a plan to travel for an extended period of time. I wanted to visit the places I’d always wanted to go without consulting anyone else’s agenda, and to do it without time restrictions.
I’m now in my tenth week on the road. I’ve been to Seattle, Palm Springs, Costa Rica, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and am writing this from the Philippines. This is the longest I’ve ever traveled, and the first time I’ve traveled solo internationally for non-work reasons.
I love to travel (but I also enjoy cozy nights at home), and I am no stranger to self-discovery (it is my nature to be in a constant mode of self-reflection) - but when I was planning this trip, and even after I started, I genuinely wasn’t sure how much I would like extended solo travel. I thought: Would I be frustrated by all of the time in airports? How long before I would itch for the comforts of home? What could I really learn about myself in travel that I could not learn while living in the great city of New York? Am I going to feel isolated and lonely? And if I do, how will I handle it?
Those turned out to be the right questions. Here’s what I found.
You will be “solo” but you will not be alone.
This is both a practical tip and a philosophy.
From a safety standpoint, someone should always know your itinerary, especially when you’re moving frequently across countries. But the deeper gift of telling everyone is what it unlocks socially. Because I talked openly about my sabbatical - on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on Substack, in every conversation - I ended up with a trusted driver in Siem Reap who became a memorable part of Cambodia. I reconnected with a friend in Singapore I hadn’t spoken to in 26 years. Friends offered their family in Thailand and Sri Lanka as emergency contacts in case I needed one.
None of that happens if you quietly disappear into your itinerary. Solo travel is not actually solitary. I am socially alive because I show up to every interaction without distraction, without a companion to default to. That changes everything.
You will follow your own curiosity - not a partner’s and not a stranger’s.
Trip Advisor, Viator, Get Your Guide - these are useful tools, but the richest experiences of this trip happened when I was guided by my likes and curiosities instead of the highest rated tours on travel websites. When I wandered without agenda. When I talked to local people who weren’t in the tourism service industry.
The thing to do in any given place is almost never the thing you will remember most.
You also need to throw FOMO out completely. On a trip this long, you cannot sustain the pressure to experience everything, everywhere. I embraced days of relaxing and reading in an air-conditioned hotel room when my body asked for rest. That’s not wasted travel. That’s the whole point of taking a holiday.
You will find your people.
Before this trip, I’d absorbed a lot of ambient noise about solo female travel - the implied danger, the “don’t go out after dark alone,” the “just be careful.” I want to report back plainly: I have not felt unsafe or disrespected once across multiple countries. In fact, I’ve joked that I’m more unsafe in Brooklyn (where I live) than in any of the areas that I’ve traveled to!
I found a global community of women moving through the world independently and with extraordinary self-possession. They are everywhere. And they are not a “type.”
The solo female travelers I’ve met on this trip so far range from 19 to 66 years old. Married and unmarried. Seasoned travelers and first-timers. From ten different countries. Almost universally, they are at a crossroads: a career transition, a relationship change, a nagging question they haven’t answered yet, a version of themselves they’re becoming. And although they travel alone, they are not seeking isolation. They joyfully and vulnerably connect. We find each other on group tours, sitting next to each other at coffee shops and bars, or admiring the same local sight - and the conversation ignites immediately.
Sisters, let me tell you - the electricity is real, and it will find you. There is a global sisterhood of women mid-becoming - sometimes quiet, sometimes spectacularly not - and solo travel drops you right into the middle of it.
You will receive a gift from the hard days.
The hardest days of this trip have also been its most instructive. The day I woke up with a sore throat and rode in the support van instead of on my bike so that my body could rest. The day the words wouldn’t come when I tried to write. The day my elephant drawing looked like a scary sea creature. The day I sat with something grief-shaped and leaned into it with full body sobs. The day I was critical of a new city - finding fault with everything, mostly because I was grieving the last place - and curiously wandered anyway until I found myself falling in love with something about it.
I’ve stopped fighting any discomfort. It’s just part of the process.
Without your usual comforts of home to fall back on, you need to find new coping mechanisms to move through the hard days. That’s where resilience is built. And oddly, it’s also where curiosity grows. Discomfort becomes an unexpected driver of adventure.
You will see yourself crystal clearly.
The greatest gift of this trip hasn’t been any single destination. It is having uninterrupted time and space to listen to my own thoughts, without pressure to draw a conclusion or act on anything. I can hear what is poking at me, and am undistracted enough to recognize repeating thoughts. My real values. Where I’m genuinely willing to compromise. What makes me curious versus what I think should make me curious.
Solo travel didn’t create anything in me that wasn’t already there. It just held up a mirror long enough for me to actually look.
I have one month of planned travel left, and I’m intentionally going to be more stationary than everything that came before.
First, I’ll be staying in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, at an artist’s residency to connect with my creative energy, experience the mecca of spiritual wellness and healing, do daily yoga, meet other artists, and go deep with creative curiosity I’ve been carrying.
Finally, I will end in Mirissa, Sri Lanka, where I’m taking surf lessons for ten days (BTW, I do not know how to surf!), continuing daily yoga, exploring Ayurvedic healing, and seeing elephants in the wild - which will be a rewarding moment after volunteering with them in Thailand.
It feels exactly right to end where I began - with a spiritual slap in the face and a reawakening of my physical strength.
If you’ve been thinking about solo travel - even a short trip, even somewhere familiar - stop thinking and start planning. You will surprise yourself with what you find looking back at you.
Thank you for sharing! I’ve wanted to solo travel, but feel so intimidated and completely naive. You’ve inspired me.
These are all such good lessons to bring back with you when you return. As someone who never gets to be alone cuz 2 school aged kids and a partner and the web of things that all creates, a stretch of alone time like you have sounds impossibly dreamy. Thank you for sharing so much with all of us cheering you on back at home. It’s really giving me a lot of life to read your dispatches.