Most people who travel alone did not set out to. They had a trip they wanted and nobody who could take the time off, and then discovered that it suited them.
The two things that put people off are meeting nobody and eating dinner alone. Neither survives contact with reality for long, but there are things that make both easier.
Meeting people, mechanically
Solo travellers meet far more people than couples do, for a structural reason: a pair is a closed unit and a single person is an open invitation. You will be spoken to constantly.
Hostels are the obvious mechanism, and dorms are not the only way to use them — many now have private rooms with the same common areas, which is the best of both.
Do something with a fixed group. A cooking class, a dive course, a multi-day trek, a language school, a walking tour. Shared activity with a set duration produces more real conversation than a week of hostel kitchens.
Sit at the bar, or at a communal table. Restaurants across most of the world will seat a solo diner somewhere sociable if there is one.
Stay longer. Three nights somewhere gets you recognised by the café; one night gets you nothing.
Free walking tours in most cities are a reliable first-morning move: orientation, plus a group of people who are also alone and also arrived yesterday.
Eating alone
The bit people dread and the bit that stops mattering fastest — usually by about the fourth night.
What helps: bring something to read, but not always, because the book is also a wall. Eat earlier, when restaurants are quieter and staff have time to talk. Choose places with counters. And take the meal seriously rather than treating it as a chore to be got through — a solo dinner where you actually pay attention to the food is one of the genuine pleasures of travelling alone.
The single supplement, and how to avoid it
The financial penalty of solo travel is real and it is concentrated in accommodation and organised trips.
Hostels with private rooms, guesthouses and capsule hotels price per person or close to it.
Organised tours — Antarctica, Galápagos cruises, safaris — charge a single supplement that can be 50 to 100 per cent. Ask about a shared cabin option, which most operators run and few advertise; you get matched with another solo traveller of the same gender.
Safaris in particular are priced per vehicle, so joining a group departure rather than booking privately can halve the cost. See the East Africa page.
Safety, practically
Solo travel is not inherently dangerous, but the margin for error is smaller because nobody is going to notice you are missing for a while.
Tell someone your plan. A rough itinerary shared with someone at home, updated when it changes. Share your live location with one person if your phone does that.
Arrive in daylight. The single most effective safety habit there is. An overnight bus arriving at 4am into an unfamiliar city is where most bad experiences begin. Pay for the daytime service.
Book the first night in a new city, always. Wandering with a bag looking for a room is when you are most visible and least alert.
Have the address written down in the local language and know roughly what the taxi should cost before you get in.
A doorstop wedge for cheap rooms with unreliable locks. A padlock for hostel lockers.
Drink less than you would at home, and never leave a drink unattended. This is the most common factor by a wide margin in incidents that happen to travellers of any gender.
Keep a card and some cash separate from your wallet, so a theft is not a crisis.
Solo travel for women, specifically
It is done constantly and safely, and it is also not the same experience, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
The differences that come up repeatedly: unwanted attention ranging from persistent conversation to harassment, which varies enormously by country and is worst in a handful of well-documented places; dress conventions that carry more weight; and a general need to think about things — walking at night, accepting a lift, being alone with a guide — that male travellers can be casual about.
Practical approaches that women who travel alone consistently recommend: a wedding ring and an invented husband arriving later, which is dishonest and works; being deliberately vague about which room you are in and whether you are alone; the confidence of appearing to know where you are going even when you do not; and reading recent first-hand accounts from women in the specific country, which are far more useful than any general statement including this one.
What it is actually for
The thing that surprises people is not the loneliness, which passes. It is how much more you notice. Travelling with someone means half your attention is on them — a shared joke, a shared plan, a shared assumption about what today is. Alone, all of it goes outward.
That is why people who do it once tend to do it again, even when they have someone to go with.