The one thing I really hate about solo travel

When I meet people and tell them that I am travelling on my own, it tends to illicit one of three standard reactions:

1.  One of awe – as if I am the great-great-great-granddaughter of Captain Cook (or in fact Captain Cook himself) out exploring lands never set upon before by human foot, rather than travelling around Western Europe which is generally regarded as well civilized and free from most forms of cannibalism.
2. One of fear – that I must have a communicable disease or some other such thing that has scared off all possible travelling partners.
3. One of slight confusion - that I appear to be relatively normal, yet must be just a little odd to be happy to spend more than a single hour in my own company.

It amazes me how many people I meet that tell me they could never travel on their own. Who look at me imploringly and ask ‘But don’t you get…lonely?’ Sure, sometimes I do. But not any more than I do on occasion when I live in Brisbane surrounded by family and friends. I’m hardly living like a monk in a cave on a ten year meditation retreat. In fact, I tend to find that you meet more people when you travel on your own than you do with a companion. You have to really, if you want to return home with any semblance of social skills intact.

Of course, there are some real inconveniences of solo travel. Things like accommodation obviously being more expensive, never knowing who you’re going to land up sitting next to on long bus journeys, ordering a bottle of red with dinner and having to drink the whole thing on your own. But all these things I have strangely grown accustomed to. Funnily enough, many of the things that I do so easily on my own while travelling I would never do when I’m at home. Rarely will you spot me out for a casual Sunday brunch in Brisbane with only a book for company. Even rarer is seeing me fly solo at the movies. And yet I love going to the movies on my own when I travel – seeing a Matt Damon film with subtitles feels almost cultural, I swear. Although I do have one hot tip – never, ever go to see comedies that have been subtitled in the language of the country you are in. I tried this last year in Copenhagen. The problem of course being that the rest of the audience were reading the punch lines off the screen faster than the actors could say them, so while they were all roaring with laughter and rolling around in the aisles, I was sitting in my seat wondering what on earth was so funny and silently wanting to kill them all for making me miss the joke.

There is, however, one thing in particular that I absolutely HATE about solo travel. It’s probably not what you think. It’s not that I can go for days on end without having a conversation that lasts longer than two sentences. It’s not that I have at times found myself in situations that would have indeed induced mild panic in the most seasoned of travellers and I have no one to blame but myself. It is not dining alone, being unable to order Paella which always appears on the menu as a portion for two. No, it is finding myself at a bus terminal and in desperate need of going to the toilet.

On days when I know I have a long haul bus journey in front of me, I generally prefer to opt for a mild form of dehydration than a session in a bus terminal loo. But as Murphy’s Law would have it, of course, the more you don’t want to do something, the more you suddenly have to do it.

Bus terminal toilets really are filthy places. Even in the most advanced nations, they are apt to look like they have just been stormed by a group of 100 five year olds who are yet to be toilet trained, or that they were last cleaned sometime during the First World War. Finding toilet paper at your disposal is as much cause for celebration as if you have single-handedly discovered life on Mars. The whole thing reeks of a scene that says look, and indeed use, but whatever you do, do not touch.

The problem for the solo traveller, on top of all this, is that you have no one with who to leave your prized possessions for the trip into this germ riddled hellhole. So you have to cart it all in with you unless you want to see yourself hauled to the local Police Station under suspicion of planting a suitcase bomb. No thanks.

Given I am travelling with a suitcase on wheels, this invariably means I can’t actually take it into the cubicle with me, but have to park it outside somewhere near the sinks. Even if I did have my backpack, I am not sure this would be any better as there is never anywhere that looks remotely suitable for resting it on the ground. And since you can’t actually sit anywhere within at least a metre of the actual toilet seat (or toilet rim, since the seat has usually long ceased to exist), but have to hover miles above it, the laws of gravity would probably prove a small problem when you have 15kg strapped to your back.

So I always find myself having about 60 seconds of mild panic where I am trying to hold the door closed (the locks were stolen by bored youths back in the 1950’s I suspect, along with the toilet seats) with one hand, holding the bottoms of my jeans up with the other lest they touch the suspiciously wet floor, while hovering over the toilet seat and craning my neck trying to watch my suitcase under the door to make sure no one nicks off with it. Not that I’m actually ever sure what I would do if this happened, short of yelling ‘HEY!’ and trying to shuffle after them with my jeans around my ankles.

Then for hours after this harrowing experience, you feel as dirty as if you’ve just had a quick dip in a bath tub full of cow shit, no matter how many bottles of disinfectant you vigorously rub into your hands, up your arms and practically inside your ears.

It’s all quite a stressful experience really. One that I have to do often enough to ensure I will have some expensive physio bills to contend with when I get home to deal with my cricked neck.

Don’t let it put you off though. Travelling on your own is great. It’s quite satisfying to get yourself from A to B in a foreign country, even if there are no wooden boats or camels involved and you’re cunningly armed with an internet connection and a copy of the Lonely Planet. And you can do whatever you like – if you want to spend a day sitting in a café reading a book and drinking bad coffee made on long-life milk rather than tramp around a museum featuring Spanish weaponry from the early nineteenth century, you can. And you don’t have to argue with anyone over directions or questionable map reading skills which can be quite hellish really. Just go and watch a few episodes of ‘Race Around the World’ and check out the dynamics between some of those travelling buddies. Enough said.

Just carry toilet paper with you. Or cross your legs at bus stations. That’s all I’ll say.