When solo travel isn’t the best teacher

When everybody is raving on the benefits of traveling solo, can I say that traveling with someone taught me a much stronger lesson.

It seems that lately, all travel related sites and blogs have been raving on the greatness of solo travel, publishing seemingly inspiring posts highlighting the benefits of traveling solo for just about anybody. I am bored of these, and when I see a title with the words “traveling solo” I dismiss it and move on to something else. I wonder when this trending subject will stop being trending and I can finally read something else.

Surely by now we have all agreed that traveling solo is a good way to feel free, challenge oneself, come to terms with one’s own insecurities, meet amazing people, fall in love, and whatever other good reason? Don’t get me wrong. I am a big supporter of solo travel. I have supported it well before everybody started talking about it on the web.

I knew I liked traveling solo when my previous job took me all over Europe and, once the work commitments were over, I would gladly take a few days off to explore whichever city on my own. Rather than wanting to learn about myself, what eventually drove me to go on longer term solo trips was sheer selfishness. No deep thoughts here: I had a real blast on my solo travels around South America. I did what I wanted, when I wanted. I only had to take into account my own interests and needs, my budget, my taste. I could travel at my own pace and the biggest compromise I had to make was over the choice of which drink I should have.

What I can say is that I have actually learned much more about myself and life when I traveled with other people. I have learned that some people may be great friends, but horrible traveling companions and that if we really value our friendship, we are better off not going on one more trip together. I have perhaps learned the most about myself and faced some of my biggest issues during a 5-month backpacking trip across Latin America, when I traveled with a guy named M.

I met him in the early days of trip. He is Italian, just like I am – that had to be a bonus, right? He seemed like an okay person, and we got along well. He looked like an easy going and relaxed man, maybe not too talkative but surely willing to have a good time. We started traveling together and after a week we hooked up. That was my first of a long series of mistakes.

It took me a while to fully come to terms with the fact that M was the worst company ever. He liked trouble, and trouble liked him. He managed to manipulate me and I stupidly fell for it, face first, and for as much as I like to think of myself as strong minded and independent, I could hardly free myself.

I never really understood why M was traveling, because he did not seem interested in anything of the things backpackers look for. I get it: we are not all the same and we don’t all have to like doing the same things. But it looked like he was merely moving from place to place without really visiting any, and all he cared about was playing his sax, drinking enormous amounts of alcohol, and smoking marijuana.

M had an aversion for English and English-speaking people. He did not speak Spanish and never learned more than a few survival words of it. He traveled with me because he simply could not travel by himself and I made things easy for him. He never took the initiative to do anything but liked nagging when things were not as he had hoped. I did the research, the talking, the bookings and even the complaining whenever he felt something was not right (yes, I complained for him!) and I had to face his moaning when he was not 100% satisfied. He just could not get the simple facts of a backpacker’s life. And when I told him so, after less than a month of traveling together, he cried. I felt so bad for making him cry that I thought it was my fault, for being so judgmental, and I stuck with him. But in the end, I just wasn’t myself anymore. I was trying to be the kind of person M liked, and that was painful.

When I suddenly had to go home for an urgent surgery and realized I would have to postpone my plans to visit Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay would have to be postponed, I did not expect M to fly back to Italy with me. I was the one who was sick and in need of proper medical care. But, always true to himself, he proved again that he was incapable of traveling solo: he mumbled some lame excuses and boarded my same flight. We went our separate ways in Rome; I flew back to Cagliari (Sardinia) where I live, and he took the train to his hometown in Calabria.

That’s when I last spoke to him. He never called to ask how the surgery went. I never called to let him know. Then, amid the anxiety of being back home without any idea on what to do next, the surgery which left me bed ridden and in horrible pain for two weeks and the sadness for yet one more relationship that ended, I finally understood what my problem was – the same one that I kept facing over and over again. It is called emotional dependency. I finally sought help for it, I read a lot about it, I discussed it with my friends and family, I spent lots of time thinking about myself and what I really want and feel, and I understood the mechanisms that make trouble makers so attractive to me.

A year later, I feel much better. I am on my way to solving my many issues, although I still have a long way to go. I finally took that much deserved solo trip to South America. Yet, I will never regret my time traveling with M. It certainly wasn’t the highlight of my life and of my travels but, in the most brutal way, it taught me a good lesson about myself, and it forced me to face my problems without constantly blaming them on others.

Yes, traveling solo is amazing and I recommend it. But I think it actually takes much more than that to learn to listen to one’s inner self, to overcome one’s fears, and to finally find real happiness.

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