Lonely Traveler - No Home, Sweet Home

One thing is for sure: family life is great and vacations with your loved ones is possibly the best way to share a nice time and to have great memorials of the places you have visited related to the persons you have been there with. A lonely traveler, for sure will not have this opportunity, but many others are opened to him.

Who a lonely traveler must be? Is it anything special you need to go around the world alone? I can say right now that there are no born lonely travelers, but self-made ones. Nobody is born to be anything. In other words, and more typically said, we are what we do.

To be a lonely traveler you need to gain confidence in yourself and from this everything else comes together. The kind of way society is structure nowadays is fighting to make the lonely traveler to disappear. But you know one thing? We will survive! Sure we will, because traveling alone has many advantages that can't be left behind.

Society makes us dependent. You can look it from the point of view you prefer, but society always tries to classify us in groups, sub-groups, tries to find us a position in this world and makes us assume this position and act accordingly. No way. As almost a 95% of people follow this rules, it is obvious that everybody has told them their obligations but nobody told them about their rights. And you all have the right to avoid following society. But nobody will tell you.

Difficulties for the lonely traveler exist. Hotel rooms is one of the discriminating examples for the lonely traveler. Why do I have to pay more if I travel alone? I do not need a double room! Don't you have one for a single person? Sounds like obvious they should have but many times that's not the case, or they have so few that you will need to book ages ago to get it. And the lonely traveler does not like to book hotel rooms in advance, it takes away the independence that traveling alone gives.

For this reason and not for our level of craziness it happens that the lonely traveler has been forced to find alternative ways to travel, probably not so luxurious but more interesting. Sharing a house with local families, many kind of hostels, working in farms to have the "sleep and meat" for free, etc. In the end this turns us into people with a very strong potential to save, and that also allows us to spend a lot more time in a destinations than the usual way of traveling.

One of the great alternatives for the independent travelers are places where prices are cheaper, and a great place to explore is Asia. One of my friends spent 3 months visiting China, Thailand and Vietnam for the same cost you would pay for 1 week at a 4 stars beach side famous resort. He was normally sleeping at hostels and traveling always by road or slow trains across the country.

The experience you can get from this is so deep that I could see it in his eyes when he was telling me about it. He knew almost everything about the region. The cultural immersion you have when traveling alone is extreme, as you don't rely in your travel partners for everything, but you need to interact with the locals directly. When we are traveling in family or friends we tend to keep more closed to the new world, our senses many times are too much into our colleagues or loved ones than into what we have in front. Taking all distractions away lets the lonely traveler to go deep into every single place visited, and this is what makes the real enjoyment of traveling.

In no way my aim is to criticize the travelers that, like myself in many occasions, stay at quality hotels. The idea is simply to open your eyes to a new universe to discover. Still, not everything will be easy, and common sense needs to be a quality over all. No excuses to be a woman. If you put common sense and get informed you are safe everywhere as a lonely traveler. Still not convinced? Well, I'll put you in contact with my other female friend who spent 2 months alone in Brazil. Her age? 22.

For the ones that still prefer a well organized trip to Europe or a Round the World:
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I do use hotels when traveling alone, but with 80% discount!
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