Solo Travel: The Map I Draw
A Manifesto and Invitation
Solo travel is one of my basic survival needs—along with food, water, red wine (Marqués de Riscal Rioja, a Spanish wine, to be precise), exercise, sleep (which I don’t get nearly enough of), U2 music, physical touch, and the act of writing.
Tethered in sequential, intense, long-term relationships throughout my 20s and 30s with two guys (12 years with the first, 8 years with the second), I didn’t start traveling alone—like really alone without girlfriends or any form of companionship—until I turned 40. It began with a trip to a health-retreat ranch just across the U.S.-Mexico border near Tijuana. I went solo, needing a break from the aforementioned red wine and nonstop beeps of electronic connection to persons, places, and things. There, I untethered, embraced the absence of wi-fi, rose for sunrise hikes each morning (one called the “Professor’s Hike” which matched my new vocation), ate creative concoctions of vegetables and grains, built a fire in my casita fireplace each night, and immersed in travel memoirs until I fell asleep.
Now my passport’s pages teem with stamps—my own little merit badge collection. A repeat trip to the same Mexican ranch. My first foray to Rome—an alchemizing adventure. A jaunt to the Italian region of Puglia. An overly ambitious biking tour of the Canary Islands. Cartagena, Colombia for my birthday. A long weekend in search of Montreal street art. Another in Vancouver. A rebellious escape to Dublin in lieu of familial Thanksgiving. A hiking expedition in Patagonia, Argentina. A fun two-week pilgrimage following U2’s Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour, hopping from Berlin to Rome (again), to Barcelona, to Dublin. Back-to-back work-related journeys to Australia before the pandemic hit.
When COVID-19 nixed yet another voyage to Rome (my happy place) to celebrate my 50th birthday solo, I pined in my New York apartment, staring longingly at framed photos of graffiti I’ve admired around the globe, ticket stubs perforated by docents in museums in numerous cities, and my trusty suitcase plucked from conveyor belts in countless airports.
Mid-May 2021, after a stressful academic year directing a writing program at a law school in New York, teaching online, and completing a master’s degree in applied positive psychology, I crafted an email to my dean articulating an exigent need for a mental health break. To my surprise and relief, he offered a year-long sabbatical. Eager to embody the bohemian ex-pat writer persona I’ve always imagined, I booked a one-way ticket to Croatia (via Amsterdam). After eleven days writing in a studio apartment nestled in Diocletian’s Palace and exploring the Dalmatian Coast, I flew from Split to Barcelona (via Vienna), spent one night, then hopped on one more flight to Tenerife in the Canary Islands to spend four weeks writing my third well-being book for law students and lawyers. When Italy finally re-opened to tourists, I jetted to Rome (via Madrid)—one credit shy of earning a Ph.D. in COVID protocols—to celebrate my big birthday a year late. Seven weeks. Four COVID tests certified in six languages. Eight airports. Three hundred pages of book-writing. I felt triumphant and formidable. Because that’s what solo travel can do for one’s psyche.
I’ve launched this Substack to share travel musings—philosophy, logistics, reflection, inspiration—in hopes that my experiences, learnings, and unexpected epiphanies might encourage others to feel empowered to trace fingers along S-curves of maps, pause on spots that beckon, and declare out loud, “I’m going there. Alone.”
Solo travel is obviously not always easy, and often feels unglamorous. It can be tiring, sweaty, frustrating, and anxiety-producing. But it’s the sum of its diverse parts—the challenge of figuring out its puzzle pieces and pushing through mistakes, quirks, and zesty surprises—that make it fun, exhilarating, liberating, and emboldening. Configuring modes of transportation, considering which roof we’d like sheltering us as we sleep, converting currency, linking syllables in different languages, taking chances on unfamiliar foods, connecting with humans shaped from life experiences completely different from our own: all of this transmogrifies our soul’s DNA.
I love mulling this concept: What if—because of travel—54-year-old me has a completely different soul-DNA profile than 30-year-old and 40-year-old me?
For most of my life until now, I’ve navigated my life wholly by other people’s maps—parents, grandparents, men, boyfriends, law firm bosses.
I’m not doing that anymore.
If you (like me) are tired of following maps others have drawn and foisted upon us, I invite and welcome you to join me. Let’s draw our own maps from now on.