Travelling Alone

My parents thought I was mad travelling half way across the world on my own, but it was something that I had to do and I came back a different person – more confident, on a complete buzz, and these experiences gave me the passion I have for travel today.

There’s a misconception that travellers who travel alone are lonely people, with no friends, and they don’t want to socialise. Actually, single travellers are adventurous, enjoy their own company, and are confident travellers.

Whilst traveling with friends or organized groups is fairly common, by choice or by necessity many people travel alone. Traveling alone is a unique experience and can be a very rewarding way of traveling, despite a few drawbacks.

Traveling alone is not uncommon and most solo travelers are able to meet other travelers at hostels, bars, organised tours or any place where travelers tend to hang out or congregate

Advantages to traveling alone

• Your time and budget are your own! It's all up to you how much time to spend someplace, what your daily modes of travel will be, etc.

• It's easier to make friends with the locals. Many great opportunities to interact with the locals on a personal level can be found and enjoyed without a friend or other companion.

• More space to make your trip entirely your own. Solo travel can be a great opportunity for reflection and moving at an individual pace. Traveling by yourself, you only have to please yourself.

• You will be far more flexible than non-solo travelers, and may find it easier to cope with unexpected setbacks and complications. There's nobody to blame you for your own gaffes, after all!

Disadvantages to traveling alone

• There's nobody to watch your back. And there's no one to watch the luggage while you go buy train tickets. You have to carry all your gear yourself, which can be both inconvenient and stressful.

• It's more expensive, as there is no one to share costs with. Rooms are usually about the same price for one or for two. You'll need to budget a little bit more.

• You don't have any social obligations.

• You may experience moments of loneliness.

Travel literature in criticism

The systematic study of travel literature emerged as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry in the mid-1990s, with its own conferences, organizations, journals, monographs, anthologies, and encyclopedias. Among the most important, pre-1995 monographs are: Abroad (1980) by Paul Fussell, an exploration of British interwar travel writing as escapism; Gone Primitive: Modern Intellects, Savage Minds (1990) by Marianna Torgovnick, an inquiry into the primitivist presentation of foreign cultures; Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing (1991) by Dennis Porter, a close look at the psychological correlatives of travel; Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing by Sara Mills, an inquiry into the intersection of gender and colonialism during the nineteenth century; Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), Mary Louise Pratt's influential study of Victorian travel writing’s dissemination of a colonial mind-set; and Belated Travelers (1994), an analysis of colonial anxiety by Ali Behdad.
The study of travel writing developed most extensively in the late 1990s, encouraged by the currency of Foucauldian criticism and Edward Said's postcolonial landmark study Orientalism. This growing interdisciplinary preoccupation with cultural diversity, globalization, and migration is expressed in other fields of literary study, most notably Comparative Literature. The first international travel writing conference, “Snapshots from Abroad”, organized by Donald Ross at the University of Minnesota in 1997, attracted over one hundred scholars and led to the foundation of the International Society for Travel Writing (ISTW).The first issue of Studies in Travel Writing was published the same year, edited by Tim Youngs. Annual scholarly conferences about travel writing, held in the USA, Europe and Asia, saw an unprecedented upswing in the number of published travel literature monographs and essay collections, as well as a proliferation of travel writing anthologies.
Major directions in recent travel writing scholarship include: studies about the role of gender in travel and travel writing (e.g. Women Travelers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze [1998] by Indira Ghose); explorations of the political functions of travel (e.g. Radicals on the Road: The Politics of English Travel Writing in the 1930s [2001] by Bernard Schweizer); postcolonial perspectives on travel (e.g. English Travel Writing: From Pilgrimages to Postcolonial Explorations (2000) by Barbara Korte); and studies about the function of language in travel and travel writing (e.g. Across the Lines: Travel, Language, and Translation [2000] by Michael Cronin). Tim Youngs is a driving force behind the growth of the field, notably through the journal Studies in Travel Writing, through his two co-edited volumes of essays on travel writing, Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (2002), co-edited with T. Hulme, and Perspectives in Travel Writing (2004), co-edited with G. Hooper. Youngs also co-organized the 2005 travel writing conference, “Mobilis in Mobile”, in Hong Kong. Kristi Siegel is another prolific editor of travel writing scholarship, having edited Issues in Travel Writing: Empire, Spectacle and Displacement (2002), as well as Gender, Genre, and Identity in Women’s Travel Writing (2004)^.

Fiction

Fictional travelogues make up a large proportion of travel literature. Although it may be desirable in some contexts to distinguish fictional from non-fictional works, such distinctions have proved notoriously difficult to make in practice, as in the famous instance of the travel writings of Marco Polo or John Mandeville. Many "fictional" works of travel literature are based on factual journeys – Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and presumably, Homer's Odyssey (c. 8th cent. BCE) – while other works, though based on imaginary and even highly fantastic journeys – Dante's Divine Comedy, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Voltaire's Candide or Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia – nevertheless contain factual elements.
Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958) are fictionalized accounts of his travels across the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
One contemporary example of a real life journey transformed into a work of fiction is travel writer Kira Salak's novel, The White Mary, which takes place in Papua New Guinea and the Congo and is largely based on her own experiences in those countries.

Travelogues

Burton Holmes was an American traveler, photographer and filmmaker, who coined the term "travelogue". Travel stories, slide shows, and motion pictures were all in existence before Holmes began his career, as was the profession of travel lecturer; but Holmes was the first person to put all of these elements together into documentary travel lectures. The Americans, Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson and William Least Heat-Moon, Welsh author Jan Morris and Englishman Eric Newby are or were widely acclaimed as travel writers although Morris is also a historian and Theroux a novelist.
Travel literature often intersects with essay writing, as in V. S. Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization, where a trip becomes the occasion for extended observations on a nation and people. This is similarly the case in Rebecca West's work on Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
Sometimes a writer will settle into a locality for an extended period, absorbing a sense of place while continuing to observe with a travel writer's sensibility. Examples of such writings include Lawrence Durrell's Bitter Lemons, Deborah Tall's The Island of the White Cow and Peter Mayle's best-selling A Year in Provence and its sequels.
Travel and nature writing merge in many of the works by Sally Carrighar, Ivan T. Sanderson and Gerald Durrell. These authors are naturalists, who write in support of their fields of study. Charles Darwin wrote his famous account of the journey of HMS Beagle at the intersection of science, natural history and travel.
Literary travel writing also occurs when an author, famous in another field, travels and writes about his or her experiences. Examples of such writers are Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, Mary Wollstonecraft, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hilaire Belloc, D. H. Lawrence, Rebecca West and John Steinbeck.

The Experience of Travelling and Learning

When travelling in other countries, we expect to meet different people, see different sights and do different things. However, the most valuable learning that comes from travel is not that we are different, but that we share so many common needs and feelings. Many of my experiences abroad have been gained by staying with families who live in the country that I am visiting.

 When a student first meets their host family, they will feel nervous. They ask questions, such as 'Are they going to like me? Are we going to be able to communicate? Have they got a sense of humour? Will I feel comfortable in their company?' Having hosted students myself, I know that host families are also feeling nervous, and ask themselves the same questions. 'Homestay' experiences can introduce a whole new element into your learning programme - even if it is for a short period before moving on to college or a volunteer programme. The learning that comes from interacting with families of the culture that one is visiting can be so much greater than the learning that is derived from staying in just hotels and hostels. Mixing the type of accommodation can bring a variety of benefits. I have often travelled with groups of young people, and it has been remarkable to see their self-confidence blossom. 

Travelling to new cultures and interacting with strangers teaches one as much about oneself as it does about other people. The challenge of new experiences will push one's personal barriers back. Coping with situations that have not been previously encountered can show you that you are capable of achieving, or succeeding at, so much more than you had thought. Learning about different cultures can teach you things about your own culture - things you had erstwhile neither appreciated nor understood. Spending time with friends from another culture will challenge stereotypes that may be held by both parties. Some of the greatest joys of travel are gleaned from knowing that your preconceptions were wrong.

Many of the opportunities offered through voluntary work/projects can bring you into contact with volunteers from a wide range of countries and cultures. In this circumstance, being in a different country might well allow you to meet, learn and challenge your preconceptions with people from a variety of backgrounds. When travelling, do not only look for the differences - seek the common areas that bring you closer together. Do not expect to learn just about others - revel in the learning that you obtain about yourself!

Author:

Zohaib Nawaz