Here Are 10 Surprising Benefits of Solo Travel (2025)

Solo travel is experiencing a renaissance. People are seeking the adventure and personal freedom travel brings, and they’re increasingly willing to go it alone. My solo journey around the world transformed my perspective and changed my life in unexpected ways. Scientists are discovering that the benefits of solo travel extend far beyond collecting passport stamps and posing for Instagram photos. Discover the top 10 surprising benefits of solo travel, including personal stories from my own trip.

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Quick overview of the benefits of solo travel

• Solo travel reduces stress levels and improves mental health
• Travelling alone helps you discover your authentic self
• Independent travel builds resilience and problem-solving skills
• Solo journeys enhance creativity
• Travel experiences boost happiness
• Solo travel increases your trust in people
• Travelling abroad can actually save you money
• Solo travel opens you up to serendipitous encounters and magical coincidences
• Exploring new places gives you fresh perspective on home and what truly matters
• The benefits of solo travel extend long after you return

Introduction to the benefits of travelling

‘Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits’ – Pico Lyer

The most profound benefits of solo travel come from stepping outside your comfort zone and letting go of daily routines. Exposure to constant change and new experiences during solo journeys shakes up your mind’s normal patterns.

Solo travel forces you to be present in ways that travelling with others doesn’t. Every decision is yours alone – where to go, what to eat, how long to stay, who to talk to. This autonomy creates a unique space for personal growth and self-discovery that forms the foundation of all the benefits I’m about to share.

The benefits of solo travel I’m about to explore come from both scientific research and my own transformative experiences. Here are ten ways that independent travel can change your life for the better.

For more tips to help you decide if a solo trip is right for you, check out the advice section of my site.

Solo travel reduces your stress levels

During my round-the-world adventure, airline staff put my luggage on the wrong plane, leaving me at a beach resort in Thailand with only the clothes I wore. Yet despite such mishaps, my solo trip was the best time of my life.

For several years while working in London, I suffered daily depression and anxiety. Trips abroad helped me to rediscover my passion and joy for life. Leaving everything behind for long-term solo travel was so beneficial for my emotional and mental health.

Taking a trip to explore somewhere new helps to take your mind off stressful situations, lower cortisol levels and make you feel more relaxed. Stepping away from our work and daily demands gives us time and space to reflect on our lives and what we really want.

One of the first things I did was enrol on a meditation course in Goa. Over two weeks, I transformed from an anxious, paranoid person into someone calmer and happier. This experience left me with tools I could use when panic and self-doubt overwhelmed me.

During my solo travels, my physical health also improved dramatically. Instead of sitting in an office all day, I was walking through new places and attending yoga classes at beach resorts and studios worldwide.

Solo travel teaches you about yourself

“A long stretch of road can teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet.” – Patrick Rothfuss

Travelling is an investment in yourself. The more you travel and encounter new people and places, your experiences will subtly change you internally. Slowly, your perception of yourself, your relationship with others and your place in the world will transform.

My anxiety and self-doubt melted away as I realised I was strong and capable of navigating the world on my own terms. I no longer had any external influences or expectations or rules to follow, it was just me, my backpack and the world. As a result, I became a lot kinder to myself.

If you are feeling lost and directionless in your life, to travel the world gives you room to breathe. To just be. The space created for your heart and mind is invaluable in helping you discover a new purpose. To know what’s important and meaningful in your life. Even if it’s just to keep travelling. You can even reinvent yourself along the way. You are totally free.

Psychological research supports this. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a professor at the University of Southern California, says “foreign experiences… the ability to engage with people from different backgrounds than yourself, and the ability to get out of your own social comfort zone, helps you build a strong and acculturated sense of your own self.”

Solo travel makes you more resilient

When I was a young student with dreams of travelling, I never thought I could go out into the world alone. Even when you’re older, the idea can be scary. Taking the plunge to go by yourself and spend time somewhere unfamiliar is exciting and intimidating. Finding your way through the joys and challenges of these new environments can help you find mental and emotional resilience that you never knew you had.

Taking yourself out of your comfort zone toughens you up. You are forced to adapt to a place where you don’t know all the rules. Sometimes you have to go with the flow and know that you can’t control everything. Especially in places such as India, where there can often be surprises around the corner. But you learn you can cope with unexpected situations.

Solo travel teaches you to take tricky situations in your stride. When my flight from Australia to New Zealand was cancelled due to engineering problems, we were stranded for hours in Sydney airport. Airline staff gave us vouchers, which I discovered could be exchanged for drinks at the bar. I shared this news with fellow passengers, turning a frustrating experience into an enjoyable one as we chatted with some beers while we waited to be put on the next available flight.

Travel enhances your creativity

When I embarked on my round the world trip, I was keen to reconnect with my creativity. I felt like after years of corporate life, I’d left this side of me far behind since my schooldays, when I was always drawing pictures or writing stories. One of the benefits of travelling is it can help you become more creative.

For centuries, writers, artists and philosophers have moved around and lived abroad to fuel their creative juices. Now, scientists are closer to understanding why travelling has this positive effect on the mind.

As our minds are sensitive to our environment and changes in habits, we are influenced by new sensations, which can spark and revitalise our way of thinking.

According to a study by professor Galinsky, adapting to foreign cultures facilitates creativity. He found that it enhances people’s ability to jump between ideas, solve problems in multiple ways and identify underlying connections and associations.

Travelling helps you feel happier

Someone wise once said to me, always have a holiday booked and then you will be happy. Even if the next vacation is months away, you will still feel the benefit.

Of course, holidays make you feel good. But according to a Cornell University study, buying an experience – even the anticipation of it – makes you happier than buying products like clothes or technology. From just planning a trip, you will notice a direct increase in happiness.

The benefits of solo travel begin long before activating your out-of-office notification. The relaxed satisfaction you feel during and after solo adventures lasts longer than the sugar rush from material purchases.

Solo travel allows you to trust in people

As a child you’re taught to be wary of strangers. When you grow into an adult, you may find yourself sticking to the same few people you know. Travelling solo encourages you to be open and meet new people.

It’s normal to worry about travelling solo, but it’s easy to make friends. Many other solo backpackers are doing the exact same thing as you and staying in the same places. As the walls of home life fall away while travelling, you and others are free to show up as your authentic selves, without judgement or expectation. You can express yourself however you want. You are simply people who have made the same courageous leap to go and explore the world.

For this reason, you will find many travellers are a lot more open than the people you may encounter at home. You can quickly become great friends with people you’ve only known a few hours. Friendships while travelling are often both intense and fleeting, but you never know when you might cross paths again.

Science backs this up. Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky has conducted several studies into international travel benefits. He says, “we found that when people had experiences travelling to other countries it increased what’s called generalised trust, or their general faith in humanity.”

Travelling can help you save money

One of my biggest barriers to solo travel was money. I worried that travelling alone for a year would cost a fortune. Especially as it meant quitting my job and saying goodbye to my regular monthly salary.

I needn’t have been so anxious. While it may seem counter-intuitive, long-term travel can work out to be cheaper than your everyday life at home.

Solo travel in places like Southeast Asia and parts of South America can cost less than you think. Meals are cheap, especially street food. Public buses and overnight trains eliminate accommodation costs. You can find places to stay that cost less than $10 per night. Hostel dorm beds worldwide are very affordable. Without paying rent at home, my outgoings dropped significantly.

During my travels, I kept spreadsheets to track my expenditure. I learned to value every penny and be mindful about anything I bought. Because I was realistic and careful with my finances, I didn’t exhaust my savings – not even close. In any case, the benefits of solo travel far outweigh the costs.

Read my post on the how to budget for your trip and manage your money while travelling.

Travelling helps you experience more serendipity

‘Travelling is one of the easiest ways to become aware of the magic that weaves all of creation together, through serendipity and synchronicity, with perfect timing,’ – Adam Siddiq

It felt like things fell into place increasingly often while I was travelling. There would be coincidences that seemed meaningful somehow. Like bumping into a friend from London in the middle of a silent disco in Goa. And moments of good fortune, like meeting someone who had a motorbike but had run out of ideas of where to go, while I had a guidebook but needed transportation. Both of these circumstances, and many more along my journey, led to adventures that became highlights of my trip.

The world is way bigger than your small corner of it. But it’s also smaller than you thought, as you find yourself bumping into the same people in different countries.

While you are on a long-term journey abroad, it’s like your senses are heightened and you are more open and aware than you would be normally. When you are in this state – relaxed and authentic, without trying and control things – it feels like there’s a special kind of spell that’s cast to bring these good things and people your way. That there’s a collective consciousness, strange as it may sound, that elegantly and thoughtfully knits individual threads together.

And just as seamlessly, you will influence and help other people on their journeys, whether you know it or not.

Travelling helps you see home differently

When we return home from travelling, we realise a number of things. Not only will you have learned about foreign cultures, but your eyes open to your own culture. Some of the customs and behaviours you take for granted are actually charmingly quirky and unique to your homeland. Your heart warms at the things that you miss, as you acknowledge the aspects you don’t miss. You notice changes and how some things never change. 

When you get home after your trip, your solo travel experiences can help you deal more calmly with tricky situations that may have previously triggered an emotional reaction. You become less attached to belongings, as you have learned to travel with just a few items and clothes in your backpack. And you understand better when to be proactive and when to be patient.

There’s nothing like the feeling of returning to the sights, sounds and people you know and love, after a long time abroad. But in another way, home is more than just where you grew up. Your place of birth or where you went to school become just a part of your story, as you start to fall for faraway places. When you end up staying for weeks or months and make friends there. You realise that you could feasibly set up a life in this new place. Home becomes a more fluid concept.

Solo travel encourages you to live without regrets

‘Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.’ – Mark Twain

If you can take the leap and step away from your daily life to follow your dream of travelling, you are already doing what many people don’t feel they ever could. While it is scary, your life will be enriched in more ways than you could imagine.

While planning my round the world trip for a year, I was petrified about what the ramifications would be when I returned to ‘normal’ life. Would I have any money left? Would I find a good job again?

Soon afterwards, I met a family friend at my grandmother’s funeral. She was excited to hear about my plans. When she was younger, she had left her job as a teacher to travel the world with her boyfriend. When I asked her if she had quickly found work again on her return, she smiled and said no, it had taken a while. Did she regret her travels? Not for a second.

Frequently asked questions about the benefits of solo travel

What does solo travel say about you?

Solo travel shows you are independent, brave and open to new experiences. Research suggests solo travellers tend to be more creative, adaptable and trust in the goodness of people. It demonstrates you are self-confident and willing to prioritise personal growth over social expectations or fear.

What are the psychological benefits of travelling alone?

Psychological benefits include enhanced self-discovery, improved stress management, increased confidence, and greater emotional resilience. Solo travel forces you to rely on your own judgment and capabilities, building mental strength and self-trust that carries over into other life areas.

Are there disadvantages of solo travel?

While solo travel has many benefits, potential disadvantages include higher costs per person, safety concerns in certain destinations, moments of loneliness, and having no immediate support during emergencies. However, proper planning can minimise these risks.

Is travelling alone as a woman safe?

Millions of women travel solo safely around the world. It’s important to researching your destinations, stay aware of your surroundings and trust your instincts. Many female solo travellers I met came home feeling empowered and that they’d discovered inner strength they didn’t know they had.

Will I feel lonely travelling alone?

There will of course be times that you feel alone. However, loneliness is often temporary and it’s outweighed by the benefits of solo travel. There are many people travelling alone who you’ll meet at hostels or on group tours. Many solo travellers say they feel less lonely on the road than in their regular lives at home.

Final thoughts on the benefits of solo travel

It may not be easy find the courage to to set off on your trip of a lifetime, but it will be worthwhile. You will make memories for life and new friends.

You’ll come back to your previous life with open eyes, a bunch of stories and a thirst for more adventure. You may even have picked up some new skills and a fresh perspective on life.

The benefits of solo travel extend far beyond the journey itself. The confidence, resilience and self-knowledge gained from independent adventures become permanent parts of who you are.

Every challenge overcome alone proves your capability, every friendship formed shows your openness, and every moment of wonder experienced solo belongs entirely to you.

‘So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.’ – Mark Twain

Next up, discover how to plan a round the world trip, including all my best tips.