Traveling Alone

TRAVELING ALONE

By Australian travel writer Nina Karnikowski www.travelswithnina.com

So there I was. I’d just arrived in the yoga capital of the world - Rishikesh in India, where The Beatles famously found enlightenment – and already I was in floods of tears. I’d taken an 18-hour overnight bus there. It was old, it was cramped, it was overcrowded, and I barely got one hour’s sleep. When I finally got to Rishikesh, my tuk-tuk driver promised to take me to the ashram I was meant to be staying at, then dropped me in town instead. I’d lugged my swollen suitcase across the metre-wide Laxman Jhula bridge, crammed with beggars, motorbikes, cows, and hordes of Indian tourists, in the 100-degree midday sun. I reached the other side only to be told I’d have to take a seven-minute taxi to the ashram, that would cost me more than the entire overnight bus trip... And with that, the tears. Tears that didn’t manage to get me a discount on the taxi, but that did make me realize how much I needed the week by myself in that place of spiritual reflection.

I’ve shed a lot of these kinds of tears over the past seven years. Ever since I launched into the travel writing world and started adventuring from Russia to India, Zambia to Morocco, Chile to Peru and beyond, all by myself. I call them the ‘lone traveler tears,’ brought on by those moments of fear, frustration, and loneliness that the solo adventurer so often feels.

But, over time, I’ve started to cry less often. Because I’ve developed four golden rules that I use whenever I hit the road alone, to avoid being ripped off or taken advantage of.

First up, I make sure that I always look confident, even when I’m not. If you look

confused or afraid, people will pick up on that and take advantage of it. So even if you are lost, don’t pull out your map or guidebook in the middle of the street and start looking around aimlessly. Just keep walking like you look like you know where you’re going until you can find a discreet spot in which to pull yourself together again. Next, I always try to blend in, which often means dressing down. If you’re standing around with a fabulous turban, some printed palazzo pants, and chunky costume jewelry, you may get snapped by the local street press, but you’re way more likely to be a target for thieves or sleazy guys. So while you’re on the road, I’d suggest checking out the local women and trying your best to mimic both the way they dress and their behavior. Cover up in countries where it’s expected, and always veer towards conservative, just to be on the safe side.

Thirdly, I always get to my destination before nightfall. Knowing where you’re going, and getting settled in so you’re not stumbling around in the dark with all your valuables strapped to your back, is one of the best ways to avoid ending up in scam city. Finally, I always trust my instincts. Women’s intuition is a real thing. So, when you get that feeling in the pit of your belly that it’s unsafe somewhere, or just that something isn’t right, don’t ignore it. Don’t walk down that dark street. Don’t get into that car. Don’t stay in that hotel. If your gut is telling you not to do it, there’s a reason. Always.

Once you’ve made sure you’re doing it right and not getting scammed left right and center, solo travel can be liberating, rewarding and totally empowering. Not only do you get to do exactly what you want to do when you want to do it (you don’t have to indulge someone else’s love of sitting by the pool while you’re desperate to go off exploring, for example), so you can make it the trip of your dreams, not somebody else’s. You can also get more engaged with the world around you when you’re on your own. When we travel with other people, we often have our blinkers on. We’re so busy chatting with our travel buddy, commentating everything we’re seeing and doing, that we ultimately miss out on seeing and experiencing so much. Not to mention that often strangers won’t feel as comfortable approaching a group of people as they will a single person, which means we don’t get to meet as many people, either.

As British travel writer Jonathan Raban says, “You’ve got to go kind of naked into the world and make yourself vulnerable to it [when you travel], in a way that you’re never going to be sufficiently sensitive if you’re traveling with your nearest and dearest on your arm.”By eating in restaurants by myself, traveling in buses solo or simply wandering around alone, I’ve overheard snippets of conversation, seen incredible sights, or met amazing people I would never have, had I been with someone else. Do I get lonely? Well yeah, sometimes. Eating alone is always a challenge, for example, although nothing a good book can’t fix. But I always see that twinge of loneliness as a little push from the universe to get out and meet someone new or to go inwards and make friends with a part of myself I hadn’t discovered before. Like last year,

when I pushed myself to do a high altitude five-day trek to Peru’s Rainbow Mountain alone. Once I’d reached the peak of that mountain, I found that a corner of my old story crumbled away, and I was no longer a shy and fearful child, but an adult woman who now, instead of escaping her fears, was a little more capable of pushing through them. And besides. Any loneliness you might feel is far outweighed by the sense of empowerment that solo travel ultimately leads to. Traipsing around a foreign city knowing that you’ve got this, that you don’t need anyone else to make you feel safe, secure or confident, is the best know there is. And once those tears had dried up in Rishikesh, and I’d taken the expensive taxi to the ashram and, with a whole week of solo meditation and yoga, I was I a bit better equipped in life to pause before lashing out, and not to be put off by the usual setbacks. *