Everyone: “Don’t you get lonely traveling by yourself?”

Me: “HAIL NO!”

I recently returned from a long-term trip (journey? junket? vacation? trek? odyssey? 😉 ) only to purchase a cheap one-way ticket OUT a few months later. But while I’m here, stuck in trip limbo, everyone asks me the same questions. One of the most recurring aims to discover if I become lonely or tired of traveling by myself when abroad. In fact, I find the reverse to be true.

I don’t stay in hotels when I travel. I rarely have the money. Hotels happen when either a) I splurge for a holiday or b) I miss my train and am haplessly wandering, wondering where I will lay my head next (or possibly c) someone else is paying….but let’s be real). Instead, I stay in hostels, I couchsurf, I WWOOF, I (will) housesit, and, ever so fitfully, I sleep in airports. I lay my head next to other people’s. Because for me, traveling is one long slumber party.

So it makes sense that I’m never lonely while on the road. Sleeping in communal spaces forces you to be sociable, whether you are naturally or not. This I quickly discovered on my trip, when, early one morning (or late one night?…) my bunkmate arrived, proclaiming “I think I’m underneath you”, much to my dismay. Whether you like it or not, and chances are it will be a mixed bag, sleeping communally is not a lonely enterprise.

Though I may have highlighted some of the awkwarder circumstances of life in hostels etc., I wouldn’t travel any other way. How else would I have met an Indian with whom I could discuss the idiosyncratic intimacies of our intricate lives, or the Germans that kept me dancing all night, or the Ozzies with whom I had SO many inspired conversations (and beers)?

You simply don’t meet the people I met at hotels. Those empty simulacra of lived travel consist merely of cubes with beds; they are devoid of the excitement, energy, and purpose bubbling up in the hostels of the world. There’s a reason the song’s not called Heartbreak Hostel. You fall in, not out, of love at hostels.

There were even times when I spent a day entirely to myself, to recharge my battery, and avoid burning out on too much talk. Those days, I appreciated my return to the hostel (or courchsurf, etc.) even more, as I knew I was coming back to a community with a similar agenda. I’m not saying people at hostels are all the same. Far from it! But there is an ethos of solidarity at the most timid of hostels. I’ve even heard of hostel owners forbidding guitars because of too much good spirit (though that may have been the result of one too many Jack Johnson songs).

So, no, I am most definitely not lonely when I travel. I’ve got a whole world to explore, with others on their own odyssey to share it with.