First Solo Trip Fears and How to Overcome Them
A Compassionate Guide to Facing the Anxieties That Hold You Back From Traveling Alone
Introduction: Your Fears Are Normal, and They Are Lying to You
You want to travel solo. The idea has been living in your mind for months, maybe years. You imagine yourself wandering through foreign streets, eating at a café with a book in hand, standing in front of something beautiful with no one else’s schedule to accommodate. The fantasy is vivid and appealing. You know that solo travel could be exactly what you need.
And yet, you have not booked the trip. Something holds you back. A knot of anxiety that tightens every time you get close to actually committing. A voice that whispers all the reasons this is a bad idea. A fear that feels so real and so reasonable that it seems foolish to ignore it.
Here is what you need to know: every person who has ever taken a solo trip felt those same fears before they went. Every single one. The difference between the people who travel alone and the people who only dream about it is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to go anyway.
This article is going to name your fears out loud, look at them honestly, and give you practical strategies for overcoming each one. We are not going to pretend the fears are irrational or dismiss them as silly. Some of your concerns are based on real challenges that solo travelers face. But we are going to show you that those challenges are manageable, that millions of people navigate them successfully, and that the rewards on the other side are worth the discomfort of pushing through.
Your fears are normal. They are also lying to you about what you are capable of. Let us prove them wrong together.
Fear: Something Bad Will Happen and I Will Be Alone
This is perhaps the most primal fear of solo travel. The fear that you will get sick, get hurt, get robbed, get lost, or face some crisis with no one there to help you. The fear of being truly alone when you need someone most.
Why This Fear Feels So Real
Humans are social creatures. For most of our evolutionary history, being alone meant being vulnerable. Our brains are wired to perceive isolation as danger. When you imagine facing an emergency in a foreign country with no companion, your survival instincts sound the alarm.
Media amplifies this fear. News stories focus on the rare tragedies that befall travelers, not the millions of safe, uneventful trips that happen every day. A single story about a solo traveler in trouble can lodge in your mind and distort your perception of actual risk.
The Reality
Bad things can happen anywhere, including at home. The risk of something going wrong on a solo trip to a safe destination is not dramatically higher than the risk of something going wrong during your normal life. In fact, when you travel, you are often more alert and careful than you are at home, which can actually reduce certain risks.
When emergencies do happen, solo travelers manage them. They ask locals for help. They call embassies. They use translation apps. They contact travel insurance providers. They find that strangers are often remarkably kind and helpful. The fear imagines you paralyzed and helpless, but reality shows that people rise to challenges and find resources they did not know they had.
How to Overcome It
Choose a safe first destination. Start with a place that has low crime, good infrastructure, and a culture of helping tourists. Reduce the variables on your first trip so you can build confidence.
Get comprehensive travel insurance. Good travel insurance covers medical emergencies, evacuation, trip interruption, and other problems. Knowing you have a safety net reduces anxiety significantly.
Share your itinerary. Give a trusted person at home your full itinerary including flight details, hotel addresses, and contact information. Check in regularly. You are solo but not untethered.
Research local emergency resources. Before you go, know the local emergency number, the location of the nearest hospital to your hotel, and the contact information for your country’s embassy or consulate.
Carry a phone with international coverage. Modern smartphones with international roaming or local SIM cards keep you connected. You can reach help, translation services, and navigation tools anytime.
Remember that you are capable. You handle challenges at home all the time. You navigate problems, make decisions, and figure things out. Those same capabilities travel with you.
Fear: I Will Be Lonely the Entire Time
Loneliness is the fear that comes up most often when people contemplate solo travel. The image of eating alone at every meal, spending evenings with no one to talk to, and experiencing beautiful moments with no one to share them haunts prospective solo travelers.
Why This Fear Feels So Real
Loneliness is painful. We are wired to seek connection, and the prospect of extended isolation is genuinely uncomfortable. If you have not spent much time alone, the idea of days or weeks without regular social contact can feel unbearable.
Social media makes this worse. When you see photos of groups of friends laughing together on vacation, solo travel can seem like a lesser experience, a compromise for people who could not find travel companions rather than a choice made deliberately.
The Reality
Solo travel is not constant isolation. You interact with people constantly: hotel staff, restaurant servers, tour guides, shopkeepers, fellow travelers, locals who strike up conversations. Many solo travelers report more social interaction on their trips than they have during typical weeks at home because they are more open and available.
Loneliness on solo trips usually follows a predictable pattern. The first day or two feels exciting. Around day three to five, loneliness often peaks as the novelty fades. Then something shifts. You settle into solo travel, start enjoying your own company, and often connect with others in unexpected ways.
Some solo travelers discover they love the solitude. The freedom to think without interruption, to move at your own pace, to process experiences internally, can be profoundly restorative. What feels like loneliness in anticipation can feel like peace in practice.
How to Overcome It
Stay in social accommodations. Hostels with common areas, boutique hotels that host social events, and guesthouses with communal breakfasts create natural opportunities to meet other travelers.
Book group activities. Walking tours, cooking classes, day trips, and group excursions put you with other travelers who are often eager to connect. You can be solo and still join activities with others.
Use apps and platforms for meetups. Various apps connect solo travelers who want to meet up. Some cities have regular meetups for travelers and expats. A little research reveals social opportunities almost anywhere.
Get comfortable with dining alone. Bring a book or journal. Sit at the bar instead of a table. Choose lively restaurants where the atmosphere provides company even if no one is at your table. Solo dining gets easier with practice.
Schedule calls with home. Knowing you will talk to a friend or family member tomorrow can ease the loneliness of tonight. Regular check-ins provide connection points throughout your trip.
Embrace the solitude intentionally. Reframe alone time as a gift rather than a punishment. Use it for reflection, journaling, people-watching, or simply being present without distraction. Loneliness and solitude are not the same thing.
Fear: I Will Not Know What to Do or Where to Go
The fear of being lost, confused, and unable to navigate is common among first-time solo travelers. Without a travel companion to help make decisions, the weight of figuring everything out alone feels overwhelming.
Why This Fear Feels So Real
Travel involves constant decision-making. Where to eat, how to get somewhere, what to do, how to handle problems. When you travel with others, you share that cognitive load. Solo, you carry it all yourself. If you are used to having someone else handle logistics, the prospect of doing it alone is intimidating.
Unfamiliarity amplifies this fear. Foreign languages, different customs, unfamiliar transportation systems, and new environments all require mental effort to navigate. The accumulated challenge feels daunting.
The Reality
Modern technology has made navigation easier than ever. Smartphones provide maps, translation, restaurant recommendations, public transit directions, and endless information about anywhere you might go. Getting truly lost is almost impossible when you have GPS in your pocket.
Most places that welcome tourists are designed to be navigated by visitors. Signs are posted, information desks exist, and locals are accustomed to helping confused travelers. You are not the first solo traveler to visit, and the infrastructure reflects that.
Making decisions for yourself gets easier with practice. The first few decisions feel heavy. By the third or fourth day, you develop rhythms and confidence. What felt impossible at the start becomes natural.
How to Overcome It
Research before you go. Spend time learning about your destination. Understand the transportation system, identify neighborhoods you want to explore, and read about local customs. Preparation reduces uncertainty.
Download offline maps and translation apps. Make sure you can navigate and communicate even without data coverage. Offline functionality provides a safety net.
Start with a simple destination. Choose somewhere that is known for being easy to navigate, with good signage, widely spoken English if that is your language, and intuitive infrastructure. Build confidence before tackling more challenging places.
Accept that you will make mistakes. You will take a wrong turn. You will order something unexpected. You will end up somewhere you did not plan. These are not failures; they are the adventures that make travel interesting. Embrace imperfection.
Trust yourself. You make decisions every day at home. You navigate unfamiliar situations. You figure things out. Those skills do not disappear when you cross a border. Trust that you are capable, because you are.
Fear: People Will Judge Me for Being Alone
The fear of judgment is surprisingly common. The worry that restaurant staff will pity you, that other travelers will think something is wrong with you, that being alone signals failure or weirdness.
Why This Fear Feels So Real
Social norms often assume travel is done in groups. Movies show friends on road trips, couples in romantic destinations, families on vacation. Solo travelers are less visible in media and culture, which can make being alone feel abnormal.
We are also wired to care about what others think. The imagined judgment of strangers triggers real social anxiety, even when the judgment is unlikely or irrelevant.
The Reality
Nobody cares nearly as much as you think they do. Restaurant staff seat solo diners constantly. Other travelers are focused on their own experiences, not evaluating yours. The judgment you fear exists mostly in your imagination.
In many cultures, solo travel is admired. It signals independence, confidence, and adventure. When people do notice you are alone, their reaction is often respect or curiosity, not pity or judgment.
The solo travelers you will meet are also alone. In environments where solo travel is common, like hostels, walking tours, and tourist attractions, being alone is the norm rather than the exception.
How to Overcome It
Recognize that your fear is projection. The judgment you fear is coming from inside your own head, not from strangers. Most people are not thinking about you at all.
Adopt confident body language. Sit down, order confidently, and act like you belong. When you project comfort with being alone, others perceive you as comfortable.
Bring something to do. A book, a journal, or a tablet gives you a reason to be alone that feels purposeful. It shifts the narrative from “alone with nothing to do” to “enjoying a peaceful activity.”
Remember why you are doing this. You are traveling solo because you want to. It is a choice, not a circumstance. Own that choice with pride.
Notice other solo travelers. Once you start looking, you will see them everywhere. You are part of a community, even if that community does not always see each other.
Fear: I Cannot Afford It or Cannot Justify the Expense
Financial fears hold many would-be solo travelers back. Solo travel often costs more per person than group travel because you cannot split rooms, taxis, or other shared expenses. The math feels prohibitive.
Why This Fear Feels So Real
Money concerns are legitimate. Solo travelers do pay more for accommodations since there is no one to share rooms with. Certain experiences are priced per group rather than per person. The financial disadvantage is real.
There is also guilt around spending money on yourself. Taking a trip alone can feel selfish or indulgent, especially if others in your life cannot afford similar experiences.
The Reality
Solo travel can be done affordably. Hostels, guesthouses, and single-supplement-free options exist at many price points. Some destinations are dramatically cheaper than others. Budget solo travel is a well-developed art with countless resources.
The comparison to group travel is often misleading. You are not losing money compared to a hypothetical group trip. You are gaining an experience you want to have. The question is whether the trip is worth the cost to you, not whether it would have been cheaper with a companion.
Investing in experiences is rarely regretted. Research consistently shows that spending money on experiences creates more lasting happiness than spending on material goods. A solo trip is an investment in yourself.
How to Overcome It
Choose a budget-friendly destination. Some countries are dramatically cheaper than others. Your money goes further in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Central America, and other affordable regions.
Stay in hostels or shared accommodations. Hostels are not just for students. Many offer private rooms at reasonable prices, and the social atmosphere can offset the cost of single accommodations.
Cook some meals. If your accommodation has kitchen access, making some of your own meals significantly reduces food costs.
Travel during shoulder or off seasons. Prices drop substantially outside peak times. You get the same destination for less money.
Set a budget and track spending. Knowing you can afford the trip reduces financial anxiety. Track your spending so you stay within limits.
Remind yourself of your values. If travel is important to you, spending money on it is not frivolous. You get to decide what is worth your resources.
Fear: I Am Not the Kind of Person Who Travels Solo
This is the identity fear, the belief that solo travel is for a certain type of person and you are not that type. Solo travelers seem brave, independent, adventurous. You feel ordinary, anxious, maybe even cowardly.
Why This Fear Feels So Real
Solo travelers you see online or hear about often seem exceptionally confident and capable. They post beautiful photos, tell exciting stories, and make it look effortless. Comparing yourself to these curated presentations is discouraging.
If solo travel is outside your normal behavior patterns, it can feel like it belongs to a different kind of person with different traits and capabilities.
The Reality
There is no special type of person who travels solo. Solo travelers include introverts and extroverts, planners and spontaneous adventurers, anxious people and confident people, young students and retired grandparents. The common trait is not a personality type but a decision to try.
The confidence you see in experienced solo travelers was built through experience. They were not born brave. They became comfortable with solo travel by doing it. First trips were often scary for them too.
You do not have to be a different person to travel alone. You can be exactly who you are, with all your quirks and anxieties, and still have an incredible solo trip.
How to Overcome It
Start small. Take a solo day trip. Spend a weekend alone in a nearby city. Build your identity as a solo traveler through small experiences before the big ones.
Read and listen to diverse solo travelers. Seek out stories from people who felt scared, who struggled, who are not Instagram-perfect adventurers. You will find that solo travelers are ordinary people who did an extraordinary thing.
Act as if. You do not have to feel brave to act brave. Make the booking even though you are scared. Go even though you feel unready. Confidence often follows action rather than preceding it.
Redefine what solo travel means to you. Solo travel does not have to look like anyone else’s version. It can be slow and quiet. It can involve lots of tours with other people. It can be whatever you need it to be.
Remember that identity is flexible. You are not a fixed, unchangeable person. Every new experience adds to who you are. After your first solo trip, “solo traveler” becomes part of your identity because you made it so.
Fear: What If I Do Not Enjoy It?
The fear of wasted money, wasted time, and the discovery that solo travel is not for you after all. What if you hate it? What if you spend the whole trip wishing you had stayed home or brought someone with you?
Why This Fear Feels So Real
Solo travel is a commitment of money and time. Once you are there, you cannot easily undo the decision. The prospect of being stuck in an experience you are not enjoying is uncomfortable.
There is also the fear of disappointment, of building up an experience in your mind and having reality fall short.
The Reality
Most solo travelers enjoy their trips. The fear of not enjoying it is far more common than actually not enjoying it. The anticipation is often worse than the reality.
Even trips with difficult moments are usually worthwhile overall. Bad days happen in regular life too. A challenging day on a solo trip does not make the whole trip a failure.
If you genuinely do not enjoy solo travel, that is okay. Not every activity is for everyone. You will have learned something about yourself, and that knowledge has value. But you will not know until you try.
How to Overcome It
Set realistic expectations. Your trip will not be perfect. Some moments will be hard. That is normal and does not mean the trip is a failure.
Plan a shorter first trip. If you discover solo travel is not for you, a short trip limits your exposure. Five days is long enough to get a real sense of the experience without being stuck for weeks.
Build in flexibility to leave early. Book refundable accommodations if possible. Know that you can change your plans if you truly need to. Having an escape valve reduces the pressure.
Define success broadly. Success is not only having a perfect time. Success can also be learning about yourself, proving you can do hard things, and discovering what you do and do not want from travel.
Trust that you can handle discomfort. Even if some parts are uncomfortable, you are capable of enduring discomfort. Unpleasant does not mean unbearable.
Real-Life Examples: Solo Travelers Who Faced Their Fears
Rachel’s Safety Concerns
Rachel was terrified that something bad would happen while she traveled alone. She researched obsessively, convinced herself that every destination was dangerous, and postponed her first solo trip for three years.
Finally, she booked a one-week trip to Portugal, one of the safest countries in the world. She got comprehensive travel insurance, shared her detailed itinerary with her sister, and kept her phone charged and connected at all times.
Nothing bad happened. She navigated Lisbon easily, met friendly locals, and felt safer than she expected. The gap between her fears and reality was enormous. She returned home embarrassed by how much anxiety she had allowed to control her and immediately started planning her next solo trip.
Michael’s Loneliness Journey
Michael was deeply afraid of loneliness. He had never enjoyed being alone and could not imagine spending days without someone to talk to. He almost talked himself out of his first solo trip dozens of times.
He went anyway, to Barcelona, and the first few days confirmed his fears. He felt lonely at dinner. He wished he had someone to share the Sagrada Familia with. He called home more than he planned.
But around day four, something shifted. He met other travelers at his hostel. He had a long conversation with a shopkeeper. He started to enjoy the freedom of his own schedule. By the end of the week, he found himself deliberately seeking solitude, wanting quiet time that had been so scary to contemplate before he left.
Elena’s Identity Transformation
Elena never saw herself as adventurous. She was anxious, risk-averse, and generally preferred the familiar. Solo travel seemed like something for a different kind of person entirely.
She decided to prove her self-image wrong with a short solo trip to Montreal, just a few hours from her home in Boston. She was nervous the entire train ride there. But once she arrived, she started doing all the things solo travelers do. She ate alone. She explored alone. She navigated the metro alone.
By the end of the weekend, she had a new piece of her identity. She was someone who traveled solo. The trip had not transformed her personality, but it had expanded her sense of what was possible for her. She went on to take increasingly ambitious solo trips, each one building on the confidence of the last.
20 Powerful and Uplifting Travel Quotes to Inspire Your Next Journey
- “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” — Saint Augustine
- “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” — Anonymous
- “Adventure is worthwhile in itself.” — Amelia Earhart
- “Not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
- “Life is short and the world is wide.” — Simon Raven
- “To travel is to live.” — Hans Christian Andersen
- “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” — Chief Seattle
- “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Lao Tzu
- “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” — Ibn Battuta
- “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” — Dalai Lama
- “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” — Anonymous
- “Jobs fill your pocket, but adventures fill your soul.” — Jaime Lyn Beatty
- “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” — Gustave Flaubert
- “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
- “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.” — Mohammed
- “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” — David Mitchell
- “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” — Neale Donald Walsch
- “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” — Tim Cahill
- “Own only what you can always carry with you.” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” — Confucius
Picture This
Close your eyes and let yourself arrive in this moment.
You are on an airplane, somewhere over the ocean. The cabin is dim. Most passengers are asleep. You are wide awake, a mix of excitement and terror buzzing through your body. In a few hours, you will land in a city where you know no one, where you will spend the next week entirely on your own.
Your fears are all here with you, tucked into the overhead bin and strapped into the seat beside you. The fear of something going wrong. The fear of loneliness. The fear of judgment. The fear that you are not cut out for this. They have been your constant companions for months, whispering reasons to cancel, reasons to stay safe, reasons to keep this dream as a dream.
But you are on the plane anyway. You made the booking despite the fear. You packed your bag despite the doubt. You walked through security, found your gate, boarded the plane, and now you are here, actually doing the thing that terrified you.
The fears do not magically disappear as you cross into foreign airspace. They will still be with you when you land, when you navigate customs, when you find your way to your hotel, when you eat your first meal alone. But something else will be there too. A quiet pride that builds with every small victory. A growing confidence that replaces the space where fear used to live.
You will arrive at your hotel tired and overwhelmed. You will probably feel a wave of anxiety as the door closes and you realize you are truly alone. But then you will shower, change clothes, and step out into a new city. And the moment your feet hit the foreign pavement, something will shift.
This is real. You are here. You did it.
The fear of solo travel lives in the anticipation, not the doing. It grows in the weeks of wondering whether you can handle it. But once you are there, once you are actually navigating and deciding and experiencing, the fear transforms into something else. Into presence. Into aliveness. Into the realization that you are more capable than you knew.
Days from now, you will be sitting somewhere beautiful, maybe at a café with a view, maybe on a bench in a park, maybe on your hotel balcony watching the city lights. And you will think back to this moment on the airplane, when the fear was so loud and so real. You will smile at how scared you were, knowing now what you did not know then: that the fears were lying, that you were ready, that the only thing standing between you and this experience was the decision to go anyway.
You made that decision. You are on the plane. You are already braver than you were before.
Everything else is just the beautiful unfolding of what comes next.
Share This Article
If this guide helped you name your fears and see them more clearly, think about who else might be struggling with the same doubts right now. Think about your friend who has been talking about solo travel for years but never books anything. Think about your sibling who wants to be more independent but is held back by anxiety. Think about your coworker who admitted they are scared to travel alone but does not know how to get past it. Think about anyone you know standing at the edge of something they want, held back by fears they cannot quite articulate.
This article could be the thing that helps them understand their fears are normal, that helps them see strategies for overcoming each one, that gives them permission to be scared and go anyway.
Share it on Facebook and tag the friend who needs to read it. Send it in a text with a personal note of encouragement. Post it on X (formerly Twitter) and share your own experience with solo travel fears. Pin it to your travel inspiration board on Pinterest where it can find the people who need it. Email it to family members who might be considering their first adventure alone. Drop it in any travel community or solo travel forum where people are wrestling with whether to take the leap.
Every share is an act of kindness toward someone who needs to hear that their fears are normal, and their dreams are possible.
Visit us at DNDTRAVELS.COM for more solo travel encouragement, destination guides, planning tips, and everything you need to find the courage to explore the world on your own terms.
Disclaimer
The information provided in this article is for general informational and educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as professional travel, medical, psychological, or safety advice. All fear descriptions, coping strategies, and personal anecdotes described in this article are based on general knowledge, publicly available information, and the subjective experiences of solo travelers and the author. These strategies are general in nature and may not account for your specific psychological needs, anxiety disorders, health conditions, or personal circumstances.
DNDTRAVELS.COM and the authors of this article make no guarantees or warranties, expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy, completeness, reliability, suitability, or timeliness of the information presented. Solo travel experiences vary dramatically based on destination, individual circumstances, and countless other factors. The fears and outcomes described in this article represent general patterns and may not match your specific experience.
We are not mental health professionals, and this article should not be used as a substitute for professional psychological guidance. If you experience significant anxiety that interferes with your daily functioning or if you have diagnosed anxiety disorders, we strongly recommend consulting with a qualified mental health professional before making travel decisions that cause substantial distress. Travel is meant to be enjoyable, and professional support can help you find approaches that work for your specific needs.
Travel always involves some degree of risk, and we encourage you to research your specific destination thoroughly, follow official travel advisories, purchase appropriate travel insurance, and make informed decisions about your personal safety. The strategies in this article are meant to help manage normal travel anxiety, not to encourage unsafe behavior or dismissal of legitimate safety concerns.
By reading and using the information in this article, you acknowledge and agree that DNDTRAVELS.COM, its owners, authors, contributors, partners, and affiliates shall not be held responsible or liable for any psychological distress, anxiety, negative travel experiences, safety incidents, or any other negative outcomes that may arise from your use of or reliance on the content provided herein. You assume full responsibility for your own travel decisions and well-being. This article is intended to encourage and support aspiring solo travelers, not to serve as a substitute for professional advice or your own independent judgment about what is right for you.
