Essential Tips for a New Traveler

When you are born and brought up in India, traveling alone is not on your bucket list until you enter college. The Indian parents have a tendency to overprotect their kids and they never feed them with the idea that they can travel alone. Nonetheless, when the kids begin higher education and meet new friends, they realize that solo travel is a thing that they can discover. If you are thinking of traveling alone for the first time, you must know a few things before you venture out.

Don’t be scared

You will definitely feel a little nervous on your first day, and maybe for the coming days as well. However, you must know that there is nothing to be scared of since you are not the first person to travel alone. Thousands of people have traveled solo before you, and many more will follow your lead as well.

Don’t follow the rules

You may find a guidebook or pile of blogs that tell you to go to a few particular places, eat at certain restaurants, etc. In other words, those guidebooks will tell you to go by them word by word, but you should never do that. Unless the blogs are updated regularly, you must not abide by them, and never follow them blindly. Explore the local areas on your own and find out the best places to visit and eat at.

Travel slow

When you have limited number of days at hand, you are tempted to see it all in one go. However, traveling too quickly will leave you stressed out, and you will only have a few pictures of the places, with no actual experience of the place to tell. Make sure to plan for at least one extra day at your destination when you can make impromptu plans. If you are in Tamil Nadu, for example, you may hire Self-Drive Cars in Chennai, and go for a drive without any target in mind. Rest for some time at a park or a temple, and observe the local surroundings. You will thank yourself that you gave yourself time to spend with yourself.

Get in touch with new people

When you travel solo, you get immense opportunities to meet and communicate with new people. However, you may feel shy to ask for their email ID, Facebook ID, or phone number, especially when you are in India. You must overcome shyness and ask for their contact information, perhaps your new friends are also waiting for a chance to ask for your number as well. You never know, you may get to make lifelong friends, or at least travel with them together.

Plan for a cushion budget

You may think that there will be hardly any expenses when you travel alone, but you must spare some extra cash for unplanned things and emergencies. You may want to go for scuba diving in Goa even though you had not thought about it, or you may have to buy a few medicines because you feel sick. Nonetheless, a few thousand bucks in your luggage don’t hurt.

In the end, don’t be shy and go for everything you want, no matter what.

You are on your first solo trip, after all!