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Don't pass up the chance to travel alone

Don't pass up the chance to travel alone

By Lindsay Eanet

Published April 30, 2009

My journey started with the beginnings of a nervous breakdown in Rome's Termini train station, begging the TrenItalia clerk to re-route me through France. No, he said, everything was booked. It would take me two-and-a-half days and two overnight trains to get back to my apartment in Pamplona. And, since the rest of my traveling companions were flying, I'd be going alone.

I was terrified. I'd gotten pick-pocketed in Madrid the month before and the whole thing left me paranoid, especially being alone, as a painfully obvious American.

When I arrived in Milan after the first overnight, everything changed. It hit me that I was alone in a foreign city with which I had zero familiarity, in a country where I didn't speak a word of the language. It's a hell of an adrenaline rush, that sort of realization. Enthusiasm quickly replaced my nervousness -- I had inadvertently been given a fantastic opportunity to explore, to get lost if necessary. It ended up being an epic trip. I figured out Milan without getting lost, saw the Duomo in all its splendor and met travelers from all over world, from Peru to Sydney.

When we were in Venice, I met quite a few students who were traveling alone, en route next to Vienna or Croatia. A few were couch surfing through Europe, using the social networking site to find lodging and new friends in every city. I asked one girl, en route to Budapest, if she liked traveling alone. She said she wouldn't have done anything differently.

As my friends and I edge closer and closer to graduating (some much closer, as in next week), I think about Chris McCandless, subject of the novel and film "Into the Wild," who, upon graduating from Emory University, cut up his credit cards and went to have that epic journey, living alone in the wilderness of Alaska, fulfilling that need for that epic individual journey. I don't recommend this, but I do think a solid solo adventure once in a while is good for the soul. And obviously, it doesn't have to be backpacking through Western Europe or wandering the desert or hunkering down in Alaska.

Many years ago, an MU graduate named William Least-Heat Moon (maybe you've heard of him) rented a van, left Columbia barreling down Interstate 70 and traveled across America, first east by southeast and then north by northwest, without taking any major interstates. He found towns geography and time forgot, and met plenty of colorful, incredible people.

Going alone forces you to meet people, to be generally more aware of your surroundings, to look at everything harder. William Moon learned new names and faces in each town he visited; I could give you brief biographies of my cabin-mates on the night train to Barcelona.

So go for it. Drive to Oklahoma this weekend and see what you find. Don't have a car? Take a cheap bus (the Megabus is dirt cheap if you book in advance) or train. (I don't recommend hitchhiking.) Lodging expensive? Sign up for CouchSurfing (www.couchsurfing.com) and find friendly, like-minded folks who will put you up for a night and show you a good time in a new town. There are really few times in your life where you can take one of those epic journeys of self-actualization, so why not do it now?

To borrow a phrase from '80s metal band Rhino Bucket, it's time you took a long, long ride with yourself.