Member-only story

The Number One Question I Get About Traveling Alone: Do You Get Lonely?

So do you?

Sara Burdick
4 min readApr 24, 2022
Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.”
Douglas Coupland,

When I decided to start traveling solo, one of the most common questions was, “aren’t you going to get lonelywhat if you get lonely” “don’t you wish you had someone to go with you.

I still get these questions when people find out I travel alone. It’s such a simple response. No, I do not get lonely.

New friends in Thailand, yes my Tuk-Tuk driver.

No, I do not want anyone to travel with me, and if I need social interaction, I will check into a social hostel. Yet do not confuse my need to interact with loneliness; it is not.

Most of the time, I think, well, I should probably not be such a hermit and interact, and after a few days, I can retreat into my shell.

I have never been the type of person that needs companionship from anyone. I have had times when I have been more alone in a relationship than I have experienced in the past four years. It is not that…

--

--

Sara Burdick
Sara Burdick

Written by Sara Burdick

I quit the rat race after working as a nurse for 16 years. Travel and Storyteller. I live in Colombia. https://substack.com/@saraburdick

Responses (34)