Yes. Why do we travel? Why do you travel? Tired of work? Stressed from your job? Exhausted from needing to work? Tired of the people you work with? Can’t stand the people you work for? Need to get away from the people who work for you? Burnt out from life? Just a general battery-recharging kind of situation? Winter is coming and you crave, need, must go somewhere warm? Seeing the world? Learning a new language? Visiting a friend? Experiencing a festival? New spot for an adrenaline rush? Food food food? Epic photos? More likes on your Instagram? Bucket list item? So many, many reasons why we go away, why we temporarily leave behind our routines, our deadlines, our friends, our family, our pets, the comfort we feel at home, the familiarity that makes us feel at ease. We all travel for different reasons. You may not even know why your travel. I mean I didn’t know why I travel. “I love travelling!” I’d say but I never thought about the reasons behind this passion. I have always thought that I enjoyed travelling because I liked to see new things, I liked to explore the unknown. I liked to get lost.

A couple of months ago, I had a sudden revelation, an articulation, acknowledgement of something I had been feeling for a while. The stray thoughts and glimpses of doubts that had been bothering me for months finally metamorphosed into a concrete conclusion in my head and made me realize that I was different. I wasn’t who I was a few years back, and not for the better. I don’t think I changed per se. It’s more like, a regression. There were times where moments before my eyes formed a stunning photo and yet, I was too hesitant to capture them. There were so many of these moments in Cuba where I was briefly in May. I told myself and I told my friends I didn’t take that many photos of people because I felt bad capturing what might be painful for them. I felt like I would be taking advantage of their misfortunes, of their deprivation of opportunities, of their country's lack of economic advancement. What was heartbreakingly beautiful in my eyes might only be heartbreaking for them. My explanation was partly true. The other part was that I was hesitant. I was reluctant. I was unsure. I was afraid. I chickened out. And I didn’t know why. Come to think of it, I realized I hadn’t taken as many photographs of people since 2015. My forever-passion was street photography. Photos of people, of people captured in a moment. A moment that would never be the same ever again. My forever-passion was capturing expressions and feelings of people, mid-action, mid-emotion. Recent years, I have shifted my focus to landscape and nature. To more the street and architecture than the people in street photography. I thought it was purely a natural evolution of interest and photography style. But now I know, it was because I was too afraid to point my camera (also smart phone) in a stranger’s face. I was afraid of offending people. I was afraid of being confronted. I was afraid of being judged.

This revelation made me think. It made me dig deep. It made me want to know why I changed. How I changed. When I began to change. What have I been doing differently? Then, it dawned on me. I have not travelled the same way since 2015. Yes, I went to Morocco for three months in 2016. I went to Indonesia for 10 days in 2017. I went to New Zealand for two weeks in 2018. I went to Cuba for 9 days in 2019. But, that was travel for pleasure. I was immersed in Moroccan culture in 2016. I explored a new culture and country with my then new husband in Indonesia in 2017. I went to see a good friend and explored “English-speaking” New Zealand in 2018. I went to Cuba this May with the same friend I went to see in New Zealand. While these were all incredible and enriching experiences, and I felt refreshed and ready to take on the world again after these trips, something was missing in hindsight. I did not gain what travelling was supposed to do for me. Travelling is what I need not only for personal growth, but more important, for maintenance. My reason to travel is to not lose who I became, who I want to be, who I need to be, who I feel comfortable being. Travelling for pleasure is like doing cardio. It’s beneficial in its own right and my body needs it but what would make me stronger, and stay strong, is lifting weights and strength training.

I first travelled on my own in 2011 when I took a 6 month leave from work to go to Europe. My reasons for going: 1. I needed a vacation - I hadn’t had one for three years. 2. I had been studying Italian for three years and still couldn’t communicate in Italian to save my life. I knew I needed to be immersed in the language and experience the culture, to live in the language to really learn it. 3. I had always wanted to go to Europe. When I was a child I had a bed sheet set with cartoony windmills, I loved Danish butter cookies, and I was fascinated by the green hills with a house on top where a little goat-befriending, bread-eating brunette named Heidi would swing high in the air with mountains at the back. Once the seed of going to Italy was planted in my head, I started saving money and looking into the possibility of working in Italy. I wanted to be in Italy for as long as I could. I ended up enrolling myself in a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program to learn how to properly teach English to non-English speakers. The rest was history: getting my Italian working holiday visa so I could stay in Europe for more than 3 months, applying for a job as an English teacher/activities facilitator in a summer camp, booking my flights through Flight Centre, buying three, yes, three, thick, fat travel books. One on Italy, one on Europe, one on budget travels in Europe. I brought all three (like luggage weight limit wasn’t a thing in my book) with me. Crazy. Novice. Dumb. I know. Oh well. Live and learn. Or, travel and wised.

I stayed, worked, travelled in Italy for more than 3 months between May 2011 and September 2011, then continued my travels to another 12 countries in Europe. Whirlwind. A sampler plate of countries and cultures if you will. It was one of the bestest, bestest - is there a word more appropriate? Probably not - it was one of the bestest times I have ever had in my life. I studied the European map, skimmed through descriptions of various cities in the Lonely Planet Europe guide, checked distances and travel times by train and planned the remainder of Euro-2011 weeks, sometimes days, at a time. That was my travel style: decide on the city, how many days, book the hostel, try to arrive in the city by noon, figure out what to do there after you arrive. A travel style that would stress the life out of many travellers, especially the organized ones. There is nothing wrong with an organized, outlined, well-defined itinerary. It just doesn’t work for me and would drive me bonkers if I had an agenda of exactly what to do and where to go each day, at a specific time. This is probably one of the big reasons why I travel solo. You get to do whatever, whenever, however, the way you want. Go with the flow. Fly with the feels. Move with the mood. There is no feeling bad about rushing someone or being rushed. Bringing someone to where you want to go or being dragged to where someone else wants to go. No one to answer to but yourself. No one to take care of but yourself. No one to rely on but yourself. And that is THE reason why I love travelling solo. You only have yourself. You navigate an unknown territory with nothing but your wit, common sense, intuition, past experiences, strength and resourcefulness. You learn to find your way not knowing what the street signs say. You learn to pee in a stall with a broken door while balancing a backpack in the front, a backpack in the back, a purse sticking out on the side and a giant water bottle in one hand, keeping the door closed with the other. You learn to spot trustworthy people to watch your luggage when you need to enter a bank but the lockers outside are too small for your belongings and you cannot enter the bank with anything but a purse. You learn to subtly survey your surroundings for weapon when you find yourself stuck in a situation where a fight might be called for. You learn to trust yourself. You own your decisions. You are your own hero. You learn how utterly strong you are and who you are when you are the only one you can rely on. This was me in 2011 and other solo travels since then.

You also become more social when you travel on your own. You open up to others more. You talk and you are more willing to talk to new people because you’re not stuck in conversations with your travel buddy. You meet a ton of people. Some you may like. Some you may not. Some become people you follow on social media then you forget who they are 6 months after. Some become lifelong friends and part of your support system, your lifeline. Keeping friendships made abroad alive and strong after months, even years is one of my most favourite thing about travelling.

In the past after I came home from travelling, I would always find myself itching to talk to strangers. “Hey how are ya, how was your day?” and the conversation would roll on. Small talks on the bus, in a line-up at a cafe, at a restaurant with your server. I missed the self-intro “I’m from Canada. Where are you from? How long are you travelling for?” A self-intro you would say multiple times a day as you rest or organize stuff on your bed in a dorm with 4 to 12 people. I just love that so much. The social connection of like-minded people - travellers, backpackers, hostellers. I notice I was also more bold after a trip. Calling someone out, standing up for myself would come more naturally. “Can you move your feet off my seat, please?” “Your backpack is hitting my face.” These phrases would just come out of my mouth as needed. Stalker-shooting, or taking organic, candid photographs of people, would not faze me either. I wouldn’t even hesitate if I saw a moment I wanted to capture.

I recently find myself becoming a fainter version of who I was a few years back. I feel that I am not as certain about things, or speaking up to people. I still enjoy talking to strangers but it’s no longer something I seek out. I feel more reluctant standing up for myself. Instead of asking someone to move their feet off my seat, I would choose a different spot or simply scooch over away from said feet. Instead of telling someone their backpack is in my space, I would tilt my head further away from said backpack. If I really need to say something in these situations, I would first rehearse the comment, the request in my head several times before saying it out loud. What happened to me? I thought my personality and who I was was set. I thought the me who was confident, who was sure of herself, who felt secure was the final product from all the seeing-the-world and meeting-all-these-people on my travels. I thought we get bolder and care less as we age. Why do I feel like I am reverting back to the me before Euro-2011? I thought who I am now is the sum of all my previous experiences, crows feet around my eyes and new fine lines above my lip. If I still have the experiences, the memories of these experiences, why am I seeing a deficit of the gains from these past eight years? Who is and what is chipping away at my strength, my courage, myself?

After Euro-2011, I went to France for a month in 2013 to study French. It wasn’t a long time but living in Villefranche-sur-Mer, I learnt to navigate around the small Côte d’Azur town, and I met and connected with French learners from all walks of life from different parts of the world in my school. No celebrities - this school had many big stars studying there before I got there - but there was a former judge, a pilot, a UN staff, a military personnel, a designer and nightclub owner, a journalist, even people who commuted to school every day on their yacht.

In 2014, I went to Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Turkey in January and February. In Vienna I met up with an old friend I met in Assisi, Italy in 2011. In Hungary I met, for the first time, a friend of a friend who was originally from Vancouver but recently moved to Budapest. In Slovakia I roamed around on my own to as far as my feet would take me. In Romania I racked up many travel stories that involved getting really lost (more than usual), waiting for a train at 3am in the snow, conversing with limited Romanian with an old Romanian man sitting across from me on the train, buying a strudel from a street vendor just to ask for directions which in the end got me even more lost (more than usual), staying in a two bed “dorm room” with a sketchy-looking man, being followed and accompanied by a big fluffy stray dog as I walked around the frigid and slushy birthplace of Dracula, fearing for my life, snowed in at the top of a hill while a massive, all-muscle, no-nonsense Rottweiler stalked my every move and barked murderous attacks at me, and getting yelled at by the police ordering me to delete the photos I may or may not have taken of them. In Turkey, I saw Muslim culture in real life for the first time and was fascinated by the architecture, mesmerized by the Moorish designs, blown away by the food, developed an addiction to real, non-sugary lokum. I also started a travel habit of plugging in my ears with earbuds to create the impression and legitimate reason for my inability to hear random and unwanted ‘come to my shop’ invites and ‘do you want a husband?’ inquiries but still be able to hear what is going on around me.

In May 2014, I went to Iceland and fell in love with the country. I also met some incredible people with whom I took day trips, road trips, hung out until…who knows what time it was. We had the midnight sun so 2am felt like 8am. I also had plenty of alone time, reflecting on what I saw, what I felt, the gratitude that filled my heart. Pondering what I should do, which way I should turn, which bus stop was the right one, which restaurant would be worthy of my arm and my leg.

In October, November 2014, I went to Portugal, Spain and Morocco. The most memorable thing of this trip was the sob-story of my backpack being stolen off the bus in Spain. How shocking and traumatic the discovery of not seeing my backpack was. How I was able to use my far-from-intermediate Spanish to talk to the bus services staff, a community police officer and an actual police officer. How I was able to report the theft and eventually made my way to Morocco on a chaotic and stressful journey. How I took the wrong train on a platform with no sign and did not know I was heading the opposite direction until I was two hours further than where I needed to be, making my actual return a six hour trip instead of two. How I discovered there was no train to the next city I needed to go to in Spain and used the slowest internet connection to book an overnight bus ticket to reach where I needed to get to. How I got to the airport shuttle bus station too late and missed the last shuttle because I read the schedule wrong. How I reluctantly spent 30 euros on a cab ride to the airport. How I slept in the airport so I didn’t have to pay for a four hour stay in a hostel before my early morning flight back to Canada.

In May 2015, I got over my temporary fear of travelling and self-deprecating thoughts for allowing myself to lose my luggage during the previous trip, and took another solo journey, back to Morocco. Morocco, where I felt an indescribable, inexplicable connection to the people, to the country. Where I disputed with the taxi driver because I thought he was ripping me off. Where I got lost in a maze trying to get back to my hostel. Where shopkeepers pointed me to the right direction because they recognized me even though I had only been in town for 2 hours. Where I sat staring at one of the most magnificent architecture I’d seen, sharing my puffed quinoa snack with a Moroccan father and daughter while chatting. Where I held super tight onto a person I barely knew on the back of a scooter because the Moroccan traffic was dangerously insane and insanely dangerous. Where I saw goats in a tree. Where I sunk my toes into the finest, softest powdery sand as my companions and I walked to a better spot in the Sahara Desert to watch meteors. Where I lamented not having strong enough prescription in my contact lenses and those breathtaking shooting stars were just blurry moving white dots for me. Where I fought my way into a car to get a seat in a crowded train at 4am. Where I met the most incredible and warm people - travellers and locals - and found a second family.

Since this trip to Morocco, my solo travelling began to slow down. In October 2015, I went to Germany, Belgium, Morocco and Denmark. The sole purpose of this trip was to visit people in Germany and Morocco. Although I was able to throw in some solo exploration on this trip, it already felt different. I didn’t have that much time spent truly on my own, and I wasn’t faced with issues or challenges that would make me react, make me think fast, make me worry. I did not meet people in hostels or restaurants or the train as I would in the past. In 2016, 2017 and 2018, I did one trip each year and on every trip, I was with someone most, if not all, of the time. It was good to have company, but it felt different. Was it better? In a way. Was it not as good? I would say yes. Am I saying I prefer meeting and spending time with strangers than with my own friends? Absolutely not.

Getting back to my cardio vs. strength training analogy, I think travelling with friends is much like cardio for me. Whereas solo travelling is much like strength training. My confidence, my boldness and my ability - or willingness - to speak out are what I need to continue developing through these mental strength training or I would start to see atrophy. And this is pretty much what I have been experiencing the past few years. Yes, I gained these ‘muscles' from previous experiences but unless I keep up with what got me there, I will start to lose them eventually. It’s not that finding myself in difficult situations and encountering problems during my travel is my travel style and what I seek when I travel. I just think that when you are in a foreign, unfamiliar place by yourself, on your own, self-reliance, self-reflection and self-awareness become the most essential tools in your travel kit. Your travel becomes your training ground, your weight room for mental growth. It becomes a journey of your development. You become stronger, more determined and more resilient through your struggles, from leaping over hurdles, from climbing over mountains, from removing obstacles in your path. And from remembering how you got over to the other side so you can do it again in the future, easier. They say wisdom comes with age, but the number of times the earth completes orbiting the sun does not add knowledge to our heads, experience to our minds, tenacity to our spirits, or vibes to our souls. Time can, however, take these things away if we don't continue to educate our brains, challenge our capabilities, cultivate positivity and have faith in possibilities. No pain, no gain. A mantra for the gym and for the training ground for our minds, as work - hardwork - and consistency is the only way to achieve solid and lasting results. No struggle, no strength, no life. And that is why I travel not to escape life but for life not to escape me.