800 Kilometers to Destination Self

Waking up on May 16, 2018, I was surprised that had I managed to get any sleep at all. I usually can’t if I am excited for a big event the next day. Going on my first solo trip was definitely a big event. That morning I would be starting off on the Camino de Santiago, an 800-kilometer trek through Northern Spain. The pilgrimage used to be a religious one, leading to the shrine of St. James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Today, it is done both for religious purposes and personal discovery.I hoped that my trek would give me insight to who I was and who I want to become.

According to a survey by the Adventure Travel Trade Association, solo travel among millennials has increased, with 80 percent of their research participants having moved from travelling in a group to solo. When hiking the Camino, there were plenty of young people that were taking the trip to figure out their life.

Beatrice Spencer, an AUP junior, claims that being young is the best time to figure these things out because “you have no commitments, except to yourself, and to who you are going to become…that is one of the biggest things about being 18.” For AUP freshman Stefan Levchenko, the realization about solo travel came during his trip to Brazil, a place far from his home in Odessa, Ukraine. For him, solo travel allows you to “experience things better. You’re not distracted by anyone else, it is just you and the country. You can think more, analyze more.”

There are numerous reasons to solo travel. For AUP sophomore Sarah Farr, who traveled to locations such as Indonesia, Italy and Ireland, an important aspect of the decision to solo travel was that, being responsible only for herself, she felt, “You can do whatever you want.” Solo travelers have complete freedom regarding many aspects of their journey. Spencer went solo backpacking for seven weeks in Costa Rica, which led her to a new state of emotional well-being. Her trip made her realize that “it’s your own mental happiness that is most important.”

The urge to solo travel also comes from a desire to meet strangers who can become life-long friends. A lot of the realizations made on solo journeys can be heavily influenced by them. Claire Ingham, a 38-year-old tall, dark-haired Australian woman with whom I formed an unexpected friendship described our connection: “We had an instant ease with each other, like we’d known each other for years, not days.” After day one I didn’t know if we would see each other again, so I chose to be myself unapologetically. Farr attested to the open-mindedness of people who travel the world. Plenty of people I met on the Camino were traveling alone to figure out the next stage of their lives and were open to the input of people they barely knew, Ingham and myself included. Spencer’s travels brought her many special connections due to the experiences shared during her travels.

Both Spencer and Farr themselves acknowledge that while solo travel can seem glamorous, it also comes with difficulties. In her research on solo travel, Jennifer H. Laing found that when traveling alone “each individual must deal with the challenges and rigors of their own personal journey.” Along the Camino, I overhead that the first 10 days are about the body, the second 10 for the mind and the third for emotions. By day two, I had lost the skin on both my heels and had sore shoulders and bruised hipbones. After about a week my body had physically adjusted, but my mind and emotions had started to kick into overdrive.This didn’t stop after the 10 days.

There is no correct way to prepare for the unknowns of solo traveling. For Farr, “It boils down a lot to mentality.” If you are positive about the factors of your trip that confront you, they can become challenges that you can tackle head on. Farr described solo travel as the “highway to feeling comfortable” with your own presence.

Right before I got to my final destination, I stood on a hill overlooking the city of Santiago de Compostela. The energy of the people around me had shifted. We felt a mix of excitement and nervousness; we were about to arrive. Descending the hill and walking through the suburbs, I got goosebumps, yet the people of the city itself seemed unimpressed. They had already seen hundreds of pilgrims come by earlier that day.

After 34 days of hiking, I had made it. As we took off our packs and hugged one another, I felt slightly disappointed. My mom had just hugged me, holding a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of champagne. She understood the excitement. But for all the other people in the square that were not my friends or my mom, it didn’t seem to matter. How could such an experience be so insignificant to the rest of the world?

Farr also felt sad after her trip, saying that, “You get closer than ever before with people in a short amount of time, and then you leave sooner too.” Farr’s travels left her refreshed, proud and grounded. Like me, Levchenko felt both sad and happy about many concrete moments of his travels by the end of his trip.

While a part of me was excited to go home, a sense of incompleteness lingered. The feeling that my traveling was not done yet, nor was my trip of self-discovery. I understood after the Camino that there is no such thing as finding yourself. I had been creating myself. I realized I wanted to solo travel more. For Farr, solo travel is addictive, “much like getting a first tattoo. Once you’ve had a taste, you always want more.”

Now, five months later, I still have the taste of travel in my mouth. I’ve understood that it’s not going anywhere. For both Farr and I, solo travel made us feel confident and powerful. Farr explains, “If I’m ever feeling weak I tell myself ‘well if you’ve done that before, you can do this for sure’,” pushing herself to confront life and its challenges head on. The question isn’t whether to solo travel again, but when and where to go, and what part of ourselves we create next.

WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY LEONA CAANEN