10 Reasons People Don’t Travel Solo & How To Overcome Them!

Solo travel can be daunting, if you’ve never done it before. You’ve probably heard of the common reasons why people don’t travel solo, such as it’s too scary, you’ll be lonely, and organizing all the details will be overwhelming without a travel partner.

Those fears are too easy to listen to, and they can convince you to stay home and ignore your desire to travel.

I used to have these same fears.

I didn’t think I was strong enough to travel alone, but I still wanted to see the world, but my friends and family didn’t have the same desire – so what am I to do? Stay at home, dream, and have regrets on my death bed? Not a chance.

It took awhile, but eventually, in the battle between my fears and my wanderlust, travel won.

Here are some of the most common reasons people don’t travel alone, and how to overcome those fears.

Reasons People Don’t Travel Alone

1. No one to go with

For as long as I can remember, travel has been a big passion of mine. I took several organized trips to Europe when I was a teenager through school, which sparked my travel addiction.

From then on, I was always dreaming of more places I wanted to visit.

When I was 18 and realized I didn’t need to go on an organized tour, and I dragged my best friend to Italy for a week.

Two summers later, I studied abroad in Spain, and even though several people from the group traveled on their own after the program was over, it never occurred to me that I could do that too.

For many years, I didn’t have friends to travel with me.

So what did I do to overcome this? I traveled in my own backyard first. I spent that time traveling within the US, happily using my vacation time to visit friends and family in other states. This gave me the confidence to travel at my own pace and to get used to being away from home alone.

You can also join organized trips with companies such as G Adventures or Intrepid, where you can go on more adventurous vacations with a group of likeminded people. Who knows, you may meet some other likeminded travel companions in the group and decide to travel together later.

Read more: solo travel vs group travel

2. Lacking the confidence to travel alone

I saw one of my closest friends travel alone all the time, but I never considered myself the type of person who could travel solo.

After college, when I knew of people setting off to backpack through Europe for three months, I just thought “I can’t do that,” but…