Independent Travel
Published July 12, 2022
It's June now and I’m finally getting ready to kick off my next adventure which got me thinking about the concept of solo travel. I have decided I don’t like that term for describing my adventures. “Independent Travel” is a more fitting descriptor of the mindset behind how and why I do what I do. Let’s discuss.
First off, what is solo travel? Typically it’s used to describe people traveling alone whether for business or pleasure, but mostly the latter. Solo travelers can face higher costs for things like cruises and tours than people in shared accommodations. There are lots of travel resources and guides aimed at the solo traveler and how they can avoid those single supplement fees, find travel groups to join that are filled with other solo travelers, or tips on how to dine alone at restaurants without feeling awkward, all of which imply that traveling alone is somehow unnatural. I used to consider myself a solo traveler but I’ve decided to take a more uplifting view of what I do, hence the shift to “independent traveler.”
Independent travel is bigger than the number of people in your travel group, it is a mindset and way of moving through the world. Independent travel is freedom from schedules - work schedules, airline schedules, train schedules, and freedom from co-traveler schedules. Independent travel is self-reliance - knowing that you have to figure things out for yourself, you are the one that needs to read that sign in a foreign language, you are the one who needs to figure out how to get from place to place, you are responsible for your own adventure and all that comes with it. Independent travel is not limited to location, it is not just city based, it is not just wilderness, it is getting away from the standard tourist traps to observe the real side of life in the place you’re visiting. Independent travel requires deciding how long I want to spend in a location so I can get out there, see the landscapes of a place and see more of how people live. The goal of independent travel is to have more meaningful experiences than chasing points of interest in a travel guidebook.
When I first started taking trips on my own, I was a standard solo traveler. I joined tours and paid that single supplement, I followed a guide around locations and showed up for dinner as scheduled. And that’s fine. That’s how I grew my confidence and slowly started to build my own itineraries and take charge of my exploration. Eventually I came across the concept of overlanding which changed everything.
What is overlanding, you may ask? It is definitely different things to different people but at its core it is vehicle based adventure travel (thanks Overland Bound for that definition). Some people may prefer to use their vehicles to traverse extreme terrain and crawl large obstacles and that’s their version of overlanding. Some may take more moderate routes and travel longer distances in their vehicles. Both of those examples are using their vehicles to get out into nature, to explore off the beaten path, to see wildlife and unplug. They are more likely to be driving a dirt track than a city street. My version of overlanding is through the lens of independent travel, I use my vehicle to take me long distances (such as through multiple countries) and to take me off the pavement and into the wilderness. I may camp in the wild or in a campground depending on how safe I feel doing one or the other. I may take a break from the road entirely and stay at a hotel/rental for awhile to rest and recharge. But always, I am taking my time, I’m getting beyond the travel guides and tourist traps and exploring the place as it unfolds before me.
Update, July 2022: Ozzie and I left on a tour of the United States. Now I am truly an independent traveler with my Jeep as my home and transportation.
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