For the few who have made it here, go you! I can’t emphasize how important knowing your motivations is to shaping your experience. Here’s a copy of what I originally wrote for myself before I left to backpack for 6 months in 2018. Hopefully it helps to give you a personal example of how you might ground yourself before embarking on your big adventure. This is certainly not prescriptive, just my way of verbalizing what mattered to me.
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I’ve driven 2 hours to get Chipotle to satisfy my craving for a good burrito bowl. I’ve sprinted barefoot through the streets of Rome to catch the very last bus back to the hotel. and I’ve run miles along the Potomac into DC to avoid paying $20+ for city parking. Like any good adventure, you really shouldn’t get started without knowing why you’re doing it.
I’ve been thinking about traveling solo for a while, primarily sorting through my motivations and goals to make sure my time is well spent and that I’m going for the right reasons. And, since I’m a list freak, I’ve decided to outline my thoughts here and reevaluate my experiences against them throughout the next few months.
First, I made a commitment to myself to avoid getting stuck on a career track right out of college and to first take some time for myself. I never took a gap year but know of many people who found them to be incredibly valuable. I knew that for me it would be even more valuable to take time off during or after college rather than before since, with the extra time, I’ve matured and gotten to know myself and my aspirations better than I ever could have upon finishing high school. So really, there is no better time than now.
I can’t really speak about why I chose my destinations until I outline my main motivation: I am craving uncomfortable, challenging travel. I was lucky enough to study abroad in Budapest during the fall of 2016, and it was an incredible experience all-around. I wouldn’t change anything about it, yet I still did find myself frustrated with the ease of it. You could almost always speak English with the locals (Hungarian is a weirdly unique language, I think I learned 5 words), the city was easy to navigate, and I never felt like I was noticeably out of place. Similarly, I’ve spent a few weeks in Europe with my family, and, as much as I always love these vacations, they carry the same ease and general familiarity that I’m used to. I found myself craving a totally unfamiliar culture, wanting to feel entirely out of place, and overall needing to be challenged through travel.
This realization led me to start formally thinking about what I would do with several months off after graduation. I’ve had a mental bucket list of places I would kill to go to for a while (fueled by Instagram travel accounts and OutsideTV features), and I began outlining the feasibility of experiencing several of them on my own. At some points I had to tame my ambition (sorry New Zealand, I will definitely spend a lot of time with you when I have more time and money), but in the end I have decided on a tentative itinerary that includes parts of Southeast Asia for two months, Nepal for a month, a brief stint in Europe to visit my sister Rhian in Madrid and run the original marathon with her in Athens, and finally Chile, Peru, and Ecuador for the last 5 weeks. I’ll write more about why I chose each place as I post my weekly updates and longer reflections, but they’re all linked by their unique cultures, beautiful scenery, mountainous terrain, and general budget-friendliness. Which leads me to my specific motivations:
Motivations
- I want to experience cultures entirely unfamiliar to me, especially focusing on how they relate to their environments and particularly how women view themselves within their society.
- I want to feel uncomfortable, challenged, and stretched a little past my current limits.
- I want to develop skills around writing and reflecting. I’m a firm believer in the advice to constantly be focused on developing a new valuable skill. This project (and this blog particularly!) is my start at improving my writing, reflecting, and blogging skills as a whole.
- I want to develop a stronger sense of confidence and assertion. I have found that, like many, I often worry what people think and aim to please them (or at least not upset them). Traveling alone forces me to advocate for myself or else be taken advantage of, and this is a skill I think I absolutely need for my career and life in general.
- I want to form relationships with fellow travelers and practice being over-outgoing. Again, traveling alone will absolutely force me to interact with other travelers at hostels without the crutch of a companion to lean back on.
Goals
These are much more difficult to condense into words, since much of what I hope to gain are things I don’t yet know I could gain and skills to be acquired based on the motivations above. But there are still a few specific things I’ve noted:
- Return with a knowledge and respect for the cultures I experience and also an actionable list of problems locals, particularly women and girls, face on a daily basis.
- Have a written and visual record of everything I experience to draw from later.
- Have contact information of several new friendly faces around the globe to stay in touch.
- Not go broke.
- Be smart. Stay safe.
That’s it for now, but I find myself thinking about this stuff when I least expect it (waking up in the middle of the night, on very slow runs, while the dentist is cleaning my teeth…), so I’ll update this as well as my thoughts solidify. If you’re reading this, please help keep me accountable! and thanks!
