How to Beat Loneliness While Backpacking Solo (Without Forcing Friendships)
Nobody warns you about this part. Every solo travel post is either “safety tips” or “how to make friends in hostels,” and somewhere in between those two topics is the thing that actually gets you: the specific, disorienting loneliness of being surrounded by people and still feeling completely alone.
It happens in the most unexpected moments, not on a hard travel day, but on an ordinary Tuesday, eating dinner by yourself for the fourth night in a row, watching a group of friends laugh at the next table. It’s not dramatic. It’s just quiet and a little heavy, and almost nobody talks about it honestly.
The advice that doesn’t actually work
“Just talk to people in your hostel!” is the default advice, and sure, sometimes that works. But some nights you don’t have it in you to be the person who initiates conversation with strangers. Especially when you consider yourself an introvert, like I do. Forcing social energy you don’t have doesn’t fix loneliness, it just adds performance on top of it. You can sit in a hostel common room, technically “around people,” and feel more isolated than ever.
The other bad advice: “say yes to everything.” Great in theory, but exhausting in practice, and it teaches you that your only tool against loneliness is constant social output. Eventually you need something that doesn’t depend on other people showing up for you that particular night.
What actually helped me
Building small routines wherever I land. Even for a few days, having a “usual” coffee spot or a regular morning walk route gives a sense of grounding that doesn’t depend on other people. It sounds small. It matters more than it should.
Calling people from home, on purpose, not as a last resort. I used to treat calling home as something to do only when things felt really bad, which made it feel like defeat. Now I schedule regular calls with friends and family regardless of how I’m feeling, so the connection isn’t only there in crisis moments.
Doing an activity alone, on purpose, early in a trip. This sounds counterintuitive, but doing something solo that I actually enjoy (a dive, a hike, whatever) reminds me that I don’t need company to have a good time. It recalibrates the whole trip. Loneliness gets worse when being alone starts to feel like a deficit instead of just a mode. Plus: I’ve met some amazing people during those activities that I still consider friends today. And by meeting those people without any pressure, chances are that you will get along much better.
Letting some days just be bad. Not every lonely evening needs fixing. Some nights I just let myself feel it, journal for ten minutes, and go to sleep. It passes. Fighting it or judging myself for having an off night usually made it last longer, not shorter.
Alone vs. lonely: they’re not the same thing
This distinction changed a lot for me. Being alone is a fact, nobody’s next to you right now. Being lonely is a feeling about wanting a connection and don’t have it in that moment. You can be surrounded by hostel roommates and feel lonely. You can be eating dinner solo on a beach and feel completely content. Once I stopped treating “alone” as automatically bad, a lot of the anticipatory dread around solo travel eased up.
When it’s normal vs. when it’s a sign to change something
A rough evening here and there is just part of solo travel, completely normal, not a sign anything’s wrong. But if the lonely stretches start piling up for a week or more, that’s usually a signal, not something to just push through. Sometimes it means staying somewhere longer instead of constantly moving. Sometimes it means booking a group tour for a few days to get a hit of built-in social structure. Sometimes it genuinely means it’s time to fly home for a while. All of those are valid responses, none of them mean you “failed” at solo travel.
You don’t have to love every second of it
The version of solo travel sold on social media is constant golden-hour joy and spontaneous best-friendships. The real version has genuinely lonely stretches mixed in with genuinely great ones, and that’s not a failure state, it’s just what it actually is. Give yourself permission to have an off week without deciding it means solo travel “isn’t for you.” It almost always passes, and usually what’s on the other side of it is worth it.
My name is Cory and my two favourite things in the world are traveling and scuba diving. You will either find me under the water or on top of a mountain. I have the PADI Advanced Certification and want to see as many marine animals as possible.
