5 Things I Learned During 11 Months of Solo Travel

A year ago, I set out for what I thought would be a six month solo adventure. I thought I knew what I was signing up for: new countries, new faces, and new stories.

I was not aware that six months would turn into eleven, or that my journey would become a form of organic exposure therapy, having me sit with both my triggers and glimmers.

Along the way, experiences tested me and opened me up. Sometimes slowly, sometimes unexpectedly, and sometimes all at once.

Here are five things I learned.

1. The World Is Big, and You Become Small, but in a Good Way

There is nothing like standing in a new country every few weeks such as Nepal, Japan, India, Indonesia, or Vietnam to remind you how vast the world really is. Feeling repeatedly humbled in new territories, the pressure to be anything other than human begins to deflate.

You begin to rethink your measures of success. You question what a productive day even means. Maybe productivity is not about what was crossed off your to do list or how many emails you sent. Maybe it is about making it to the ocean for sunset heart to hearts with friends. Maybe it is letting yourself unravel and feel deeply instead of holding and performing.

2. You Learn How to Love People, Let Them Go, and Love Again

Travel is an ongoing practice in letting go. You form unexpected friendships, like a woman on a 2 a.m. volcanic hike, a stranger in a monastery, or someone you meet watching surfers at sunset who feels strangely familiar. You go deep quickly because travel compresses time, and then you part ways just as fast.

Travel cracks you open and expands your heart.

You learn to love fully without holding on tightly, to let people come and go without making it mean loss, and to believe that every connection, no matter how brief, offered you something true.

Travel teaches you to open your heart and keep it open even when the chapters are short. There is grief, and it hurts. But you are reminded that a heart that grieves is a heart that works. And you are reminded again that everything in this lifetime is impermanent.

3. Your Parts Come with You, and New Ones Appear

Solo travel is a walking meditation on Internal Family Systems.

The planner part panics when the WiFi drops. The protector part freaks out when a monkey blows out the power line and you are left in the dark and with no air conditioning. The adventurous part takes the lead as you learn to ride a motorbike. The fearful part shows up, especially when what you feared most happens and you fall.

And then there is the part of you learning to love all your parts. Travel becomes a dialogue with your inner world, revealing who is ready to lead and who is ready to soften.

Some inner guide keeps reminding you that you are here to master radical self love.

4. There Is Nothing Like Getting Physically Sick to Also Make You Feel Emotionally Vulnerable

Physical vulnerability has a way of stripping everything down. The distance from home feels more real, and the desire for someone to sit beside you or check in on you becomes louder.

But those moments of vulnerability also showed me how not alone I was.

When I got sick in India, my tour guide accompanied me to the doctor’s office and waited with me like a protective older brother. In Bali, new friends checked in regularly and asked what they could bring or how they could help. Seeing this challenged the part of me that believed I had to handle everything alone.

And it was not only illness that revealed this truth.

There was a day in Japan after a rigorous hike when I was exhausted and stranded in a parking lot, unable to find a taxi back to my hotel miles away. I asked a group of strangers for help calling a taxi, but instead they changed their Saturday plans and offered to drive me themselves.

I could not believe it, and I felt like a burden, but they insisted with such warmth. When we arrived at my hotel, none of us were ready to part ways.

We ended up spending the afternoon together having easy conversations over warm food, followed by a trip to the hot springs.

I was treated like an old friend, not someone they had just met. This really stayed with me.

5. You Begin to Rethink Everything, Including Success, Mortality, Happiness, and the Life You Want to Live

Maybe it has to do with spending two weeks in Varanasi, a city of duality where life and death exist side by side and open air cremations burn along the river while daily life continues around them. Everything feels like it is happening everywhere, all at once.

Being reminded of my own mortality, I began to question:

What kind of life do I actually want to live?
What are my true measures of success?
What genuinely matters to me?
Who are the happiest people I have met?
And what do I truly need to feel fulfilled?

The answers surprised me.

I spent eleven days in a remote village in Northern Thailand and encountered some of the happiest people. It was a place that felt raw and still untouched. The kind of place that is becoming harder and harder to find. People there live simply, with few material resources but a strong sense of community. Songs played through the village during spontaneous midday karaoke over a loudspeaker. As I walked to the coffee hut, I passed people smiling at me. They seemed genuinely happy to see me.

Meals were prepared and shared without hurry. Even the dogs seemed happier. Maybe absorbing the energy of the village.

There was just being more with less.

It made me see that happiness is not found in achieving more, but in needing less. I kept returning to the mindfulness principle of non striving and to a meditation mantra I have heard, but that took on deeper meaning during those weeks:

Nowhere to go.
Nothing to get.
No one to be.

Maybe happiness comes from letting go of the striving, deepening the listening and presence, and living a life that may look less impressive but feels more aligned.