Why backpack alone? In recent years, solo backpacking has been an increasing trend in travelling and here is our compiled list of 15 reasons to backpack alone!
1. It’s easier than group travelling
Just grab your backpack and fill in all the essentials and you’re good to go! With a passport and some money, you can travel to any places in the world that you want! (Of course this requires a bit of planning, but so does group travelling)
2. It expands your horizon
Travelling will always bring you new perspectives and experiences, and backpacking alone offers you the maximum exposure that you’d obtained because you are the one responsible for your own experience!
3. Increases your self-awareness
Backpacking is awesome simply because you will be pushed out of your comfort zone more than you planned to be, and when challenges are accepted, you will have a better understanding of yourself as a person overall.
4. Meeting new people, and create meaningful relationships
We don’t usually have the chance to meet with new people (or those outside of our social bubble), but backpacking alone offers you this perk. The people you meet throughout your journey will usually be your lifelong connections and those small talks and short travelling moments will be cherished till eternity.
5. Learn new languages
The satisfaction in learning how to say hello in Thai, greet others good morning in Spanish, asking for direction in Japanese, or even say I love you in Khmer is immense. Knowing and speak more languages will always make you a better person.
6. Doing things you previously thought of as impossible
Climbing to the top of the mountain in China, helping to teach in a rural school in India, cooking for a group of homeless people in Nepal, or even building a community house in Vietnam, all these impossible to-do list will be checked off one-by-one without you even noticing it.
7. Gives you adventure
A trip to Starbucks or to school is not really an adventure is it? Backpacking alone gives you exactly this adventure, be it navigating through the rural areas of Cambodia, or volunteering in a make shift school in Mozambique, or even crossing the borders of India to Pakistan, it will never be like a boring trip to the school again!
8. Gives you education
Out of classrooms. Admit it, how will you learn best? Sitting in a lecture hall or seeing it for yourself? Be it economy, politics, culture, history, sociology, or even geography, all of these will be learned throughout your backpacking journey.
9. For the awesome stories
Who wouldn’t love to tell their friends and family about the time when you had to eat fried bugs in Cambodia, or how you lose a football match to a group of Indonesian children, and that time when you walked on the Great Wall of China? All these feats could easily be done when you’re backpacking alone.
10. All the foods
Ever wanted to try out some exotic and bizarre or local and original delicacies from around the world? Why stop at reading about them online? Go backpack and try them out, no one is going to stop you from trying it all!
11. Experience culture shocks
When in Rome, do as the Romans did. There is no better way to describe the shock you’ll experience in another country when you’re backpacking. Be it the way you greet each other, or the festivals held in that country, words will never be enough to express it!
12. As a transition
Just finished your high school, or recently accepted into a university? Whatever it may be, backpacking could be an awesome transition between your different life stages. And it gives you a lot of benefits with it, so why not?
13. Seeing the world, as it is
With the ever increasing technology, news are getting spread around faster than we can comprehend. The world has been shaped in a certain way by mass media, and there’s no better way to verify if the world is as described so is by living it yourself.
14. To prove that you can
Before you go, many (including yourself) will say that you cannot backpack alone. So what’s the best way to disprove it? By backpacking alone, and make it by in one piece.
15. Just for the hell of it
