One Year of Travelling Without a Home by an Indian female solo traveler,- Shivya Nath
This post left me awestruck. So, I did the next best thing any rational person would do.
Frantically reading as many blogs, videos as possible for anything and everything related to women travelling solo. Topics like –
- Things to keep in mind before you start solo traveling,
- Best countries to travel (followed by in-depth research of each place),
- What to pack,
- Blogs and stories of women who have traveled solo,
- How much it cost,
- Common fears and how to overcome them, etc. etc.
Needless to say for the next few weeks, I was hooked and have already daydreamed about all the places. Before I knew, I had fallen prey to the classic trap of ‘paralysis by analysis’.
Thankfully, I soon realized that I have to face my fears and booked non-refundable tickets to Singapore. Looking back, it was most certainly one of the best decisions I had made.
Solo travel is one of the most underrated and liberating experiences on the planet. It helps you re-discover the world around and inside you in a different lens. You learn so many things – the good, bad, and the ugly – about yourself and the world which you otherwise wouldn’t have learned if you were traveling with someone else.
I have always been a planning freak when I travel with others – be it researching the best destination, reviewing 100’s of TripAdvisor comments about the best resorts, creating a Google map on things to see, buy, activities etc. etc.
On the day of travel, I woke up late, dumped everything I can grab in under 10 mins. Breakfast is of course out of the picture. I had to drag my 2 heavy suitcases from the 3rd floor alone at 4 am (Why the hell I wanted an upgrade!!), figure out whether the driver has arrived and the lady on the call couldn’t speak English. (PS: I was in Thailand.)
I ask the driver to take any shortcut he knows. And that’s when it hits me, that this is safety 101 nightmare for any solo travel. I quickly try to track down the route on the map, but the driver kept changing the route. Meanwhile, he asks me to keep the window close and motion sickness was at an all-time high, and not having breakfast or keeping any snacks in the handbag didn’t help either.
To make matter worse, I had mistaken the check-in time for the International terminal as 2 hours instead of 3. So, now I would have 15-20 mins to do immigration, security, and the baggage drop. And some other additional mishaps were my Singapore hotel wasn’t booked, I didn’t have a pen (for filling the immigration form), for some reason I believed that I was going to Singapore airport which is huge and hence for sure I’m missing the flight. So, why the effort? Maybe this solo trip wasn’t meant to be. This is God’s signal for preventing me from doing something stupid.
Anyways, long story short, I did manage to board the flight. Unfortunately, this had a long layover in Malaysia which I was unaware of. I blame my sleep and food deprivation for this, but I ended up following the crowd and waited in a long queue of immigration, just to realize that I had no business there. Frustrated and with 2 more hours left, I decided to find a vegetarian food joint and just sit next to the boarding gate.
The only veg food options had a long queue and my credit cards were not working in any of the airport lounges. To add to the drama, the boarding gate changes at the last minute and even though this is a silent airport, I was really mad about why the hell they couldn’t announce. I rush to the new boarding gate with my 2 jumbo jet suitcases and laptop bag and (not) to my surprise the flight is delayed. Thankfully, I recalled that I haven’t booked the Singapore hotel room yet and of course the prices have gone up.
So, I finally reach the ‘high-priced’ hotel almost 14 hrs later – super hungry and dead tired and so looking forward to a long soak in the lovely bathtub. It turns out that the hotel is ridiculously tiny and it’s some robo-fied hotel which meant I had to drag the luggage again. The only veg option has mushrooms and they didn’t had any room service.
Tired, angry, frustrated, hungry, sleepy I step out to find vegetarian food joint at 8 pm – just to realize that pretty much everything is close. People in Singapore eat early and I was definitely walking in a not so happening lane. I finally return back to the hotel with some fruits, book another hotel, and pass out. I really don’t have any count of the number of times my brain has repeated these golden words -” This trip was a bad idea. It is a disaster.”
Still keen on reading what happened next? Check this My First Solo Travel.
[…] perfect destinations, resorts, weather, things to do (and not to do) – yep, that’s me. The first day of my trip was nothing short of a nightmare. Looking back, I think it was a testament to the learnings […]