When the summer school hiatus hits, my family dutifully departs the Middle East to let their hair down in the UK, the US or both. The usual protocol for me is to join them for one or two stints over the summer.
But, this year, protocol be damned, I think. I decide I should politely alight the conveyer belt to family routine, and consider something that would have never occurred to me only a few years back: solo travel.
Traditionally perceived as the domain of those with the social skills of a USB stick (a really low 2GB one), independent ventures now seem to attract fewer pitying glances. Several of my work colleagues seem to have taken to them with admirable ease. One of them seems to have a bucket list of European capital cities to conquer on her own like Boadicea from atop a tour bus.
I canvass opinion on destinations. This is like asking “What is the best food?” I get recommendations ranging from the Trans-Siberian railway journey, to Iran to Japan. I mention that I plan to go away for two weeks. Eyebrows rise. Even the more seasoned solo travellers counsel against such recklessly wanton ambition. Apparently a few days should be enough for the first time of dipping my toe in this swimming pool for one, to know whether I can bear my own company.
I read some solo traveller blogs. Each one enthusiastically espouses the benefits of going it alone but I can’t help notice that the trigger for each writer’s first solo venture wasn’t usually out of choice. Some explain how a travelling partner let them down (expiring passport, splintered pancreas etc.) but rather than write off the airfare/hotel costs, they decided to strike out as a group of one, invariably concluding that it was the best decision they ever made. One blog is by a widow who decided to start a solo globe-trotting mission after her husband died.
So few actively seek out solo travel to begin with: should that be telling me something? Or does it merely show that fate was generous enough to lead them to pierce through the veil of societal convention and stumble upon the true essence of self? (And hopefully not just the true essence of selfie).
I visualize myself pottering around somewhere semi-exotic, working up an appetite. And then my future reverie hits a pothole: how and where would I eat?
Solo travellers often concede that eating in a restaurant alone can be uncomfortable. But the awkwardness is not what bothers me. I couldn’t care less what people think if they are bored enough to try to guess my story (loner, snob, unhygienic, psycho, stood up). I’ve eaten alone before at restaurants. (In one half-empty establishment I remember tapping notes into my phone about my to-dos for the week ahead and then taking a photo of a dish and Whatsapp-ing it to my wife. The staff suddenly became super polite and attentive assuming, I guess, that I was a reviewer of some ilk).
No, my problem is the waste of an opportunity to socialize and share. It’s no revelation to say that eating in a restaurant is a decidedly social activity. The ritual, the choices, the ordering, the discussion, the pauses, the ebb and flow of the courses and the conversation intertwined throughout. Okay, it’s not ballet, but dining, whether formal or completely casual, is an experience that comes into its own when shared. Controversial clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson contends that humans are descended from lobsters. I would theorize that a lot of us may be descended from cows because, boy, do I like to graze.
In Arabic there is the term “Kulu Jameiah” which means “eating together” and is lauded as a virtuous act because it helps build group and personal bonds. Many cultures make eating synonymous with the collective. Whilst I’m not a fan of food heaped in the middle of a communal table encircled by folks pawing at it with bare hands like a pottery class with edible clay, I understand the power behind the notion of “breaking bread” with one’s proverbial brother (as long as it’s not white: those refined carbs are killing me, I don’t care how good the company is).
Solo travel aficionados suggest two ways out of this boundless ignominy. The first is to look for restaurants with set-ups that encourage conversation: larger communal tables where people have to sit together or seats at a bar to strike up some chatter with a fellow stranger on a stool (AKA a “single serving friend” © Tyler Durden). The second way out is the rather prosaic advice to just eat on the go (“street food is the authentic stuff!”) and avoid the dreaded “table for one?” query from the Maître d’.
I think, surely, part of travelling has to be the experience of discovering, nay savouring, the local cuisine. How is eating on the go or skedaddling as soon as you’ve swallowed, embracing the travel embarked on? I don’t like the idea of reducing the culinary discoveries of solo travel to just, you know, eating – functionally, swiftly.
Those solo eaters who brave the table for one, mostly do so with a crutch. Wi-Fi often becomes as important as what’s on the menu. The phone/kindle/book/magazine* (*delete as applicable) becomes the dining partner. It shows we need something to interact with.
The truest way to reject this is to unashamedly embrace the food itself without distraction or caveat. A friend who is an unrepentant foodie has a habit of eating with singular purpose, especially meat. So we’d be served a steak and he’d take a hearty mouthful and close his eyes (to shut off the visual senses and dial up the taste buds, not because my face was putting him off). He would chew slowly like it might be his last mouthful before the electric chair. He’d then open his eyes like a hypnotist had instructed him to “return” to the room and give his pronouncement on the meat like a shaman predicting the future. That is engaging with food.
And I hope that is what I would do if dining alone abroad: go full solo. No crutches (phone stowed, no reading material), no pretending that “people-watching” is a worthwhile pursuit (an activity that would never otherwise be given the time of day). Just me and the plate. But how many of us have the presence of mind to be so present and in the moment when eating alone amongst others?
So the pros and cons of solo travel are starting to encircle my mind. There are obvious upsides: going at precisely your own pace, not having to manage different energies within a group (especially three- generation family escapades), only having to convince yourself about what to see or how long to spend on anything. That is freedom, no doubt. But is it travel in its most fully realized form?
Travel is about the sites, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the vibe, and everything in between. Technically, all of those things can be experienced by the solo traveller. None of it inherently requires a companion in order to be experienced at a base level.
But the more I think about what I enjoy about travel, I realize my experience is undercooked if it isn’t shared (with a person who of course is willing and able to articulate, verbally and non-verbally, about the shared experience). I am not trying to create an Orwellian stigma about the solo traveller of “four legs good, two legs bad”. I’m just saying that four (or more) legs work far better for me.
In fact, any experience you deliberately subject yourself to in order to elicit an emotional-cerebral response (and travel is a clear example of that) is given greater colour when it meets a feedback loop with someone who engages you. This isn’t about them just mirroring and reinforcing what you think to help you justify your own feelings; this is also about them seeing other angles that you didn’t see. They add their subjectivity to your own and make both better understood.
If you are genuinely only concerned to know, and are satisfied with only understanding, your own reaction to an experience, then so be it. I realize that I’m not one of those people. I’m a sharer.
The summer break arrives. Despite the downsides I foresee, I am close to giving solo travel a crack. Then my sons come up with an idea that torpedoes the solo mission. They propose a week for the three of us together in NYC. I don’t need to be asked twice.
It’s a safe choice but, heck, U2 are playing Madison Square Garden. Feedback loops here we come.