Solo Backpacking Quotes

The world is full of books, movies and stories about how the loss of a loved one, or a change in fortune, or a severe illness or another tragedy of such magnitude catapulted someone to reset their lives and chase long-forgotten dreams. I’m thinking of Cheryl Strayed, who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail solo after the unexpected and heartbreaking death of her mother, and Elizabeth Gilbert, who embarked on a year-long journey around the world after a painful divorce and depression. I admire their grit to pick themselves up and do something extraordinary in the face of tragedy. But what about the tragedy of a mundane, average, unfulfilling life?

This was something I began appreciating about life abroad: how much more malleable we become to chance encounters.

few years ago, for a study published in 2008 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, researchers asked thirty-four University of Virginia students to wear weighted backpacks and estimate the incline of a steep (26-degree) hill. The guesses were wildly inaccurate, which is no surprise. People have as hard a time estimating angles as they do estimating how many hours they work or sleep. What is surprising is that students who were standing next to their friends perceived the hill as much less steep than students who stood alone did. When asked to estimate the angle, those with friends said 47 degrees (compared with 55 degrees for solo walkers), and “the longer friends knew each other, the less steep the hill appeared,” the researchers wrote.

There is sometimes a misconception that you have to be self-assured, oozing with confidence, a social butterfly, and comfortable with your own company to long-term solo travel. But that is simply not true

June 1, 2015 “I’m on the airplane going back home. Everyone is speaking English. It doesn’t feel real. Like I’m living a dream. I don’t feel it in my soul that I should be going home.

It is in Brasilia that I formed these cross-cultural relationships. Our energies together were striking, and the conversations we had were natural, innovative, and truly different than what I was used to in Canada. I developed a lot of patience by listening to people whose native language was not English, and I grew a profound sense of admiration for those who work so hard to learn English.