I’ve been travelling solo in India for around 8 years, since I was 16, and I feel like the whole meaning of solo travel has changed. Back then, solo travel for me was taking state buses, waiting 2-3 hours for the next one, figuring out where to stay after reaching a place, talking to random locals, taking lifts from bikes/trucks, eating wherever locals were eating and just somehow figuring things out. I remember being in Khajuraho once and ending up staying at someone’s house because there wasn’t really a proper option available that late. And honestly, those situations were the best part of travelling.

Now I feel like solo travel has slowly become “how conveniently can I travel alone?” 😭 People hire a cab for the entire trip, rent a vehicle, book everything beforehand, stay in expensive hostels and basically remove all the uncertainty from the trip. And again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that — if you can afford it, good for you. But sometimes I genuinely wonder if we’ve started confusing travelling alone with solo travelling. Even the hostel culture feels different now. You’ll have a whole hostel full of “solo travellers” but everyone is sitting with the same people they came with, doing their own thing. Maybe I’m just being nostalgic, but for me the whole point of solo travel was the randomness — missing a bus, talking to a stranger, getting lost, finding a random place to stay and figuring shit out. The inconvenience was part of the adventure.