Last year, on the same day, 8th of April, I set out to my first solo trip. It was a result of extreme boredom I felt at that time and having no one to travel with. I wasn’t sure how am I gonna survive this trip across Eastern Europe on my own. But I decided to take my chances and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. I went to 5 countries on my own during this trip, and every single day was full of surprises.
As a result, my love for traveling got magnified. I did 10 trips during this time out of which 8 were solo. When I started traveling solo, I was a loner but became a lone wolf. I made friends and lovers all over the places I went.
I climbed mountains, scaled city walls, ran, gazed stars in middle of no where. I tried the cuisine of several counties. I tried wines that tasted better than anything, I kissed the lips that tasted better than any wine. I saw blossoming flowers. I cycled and hiked to the point where my body couldn’t take it anymore.
I met the most amazing people in this year and also experienced the bad side of humanity. I lost my heart but win hearts at the same time.
Traveling solo gave me opportunity to talk and mingle with local people and it changed the way I thought, it made me open minded. I learned that it’s ok to be different. Being the only person with different skin color and language in a new place and later becoming friends with those strangers is such an empowering experience. It changed my fear of unknown into curiosity.
For the last couple months, my journeys were limited to Bulgaria for personal reasons. Switching between jobs, I knew I’ll have some time to kill in April, so I started to look for cheap flights to places where I can find dark skies and mountains. Iceland was on my list for quite sometime and I managed to find really cheap flight to Iceland from Amsterdam. Luckily, I found the tickets from 8th April to 13th and the first 2 dates were almost moonless nights.
I also wanted to do this trip to have sometime to think about the past few months in nature and find some inner peace. Things have been really tough lately for me and I need to get myself and my thoughts together.
Plan was to do some hiking and see northern lights if I could. Beside that, I had no solid plan. If was looking for “things to do in Iceland” 3 hours before my flight. For some reason, I didn’t feel excited about this trip at all. It’s been a while since I had a proper solo trip. My trips to Bulgaria had spoiled me. The thought of being by myself in a new place seemed kinda scary again.
In the end, not having any plan, just like always turned out to be the best plan. Although there were times when I felt down during the trip and that was because of personal reasons, the trip turned out to be very nice. Following is the day be day story of my trip,
Abby On Travel 