I have been to Auschwitz. I went alone, and I am profoundly glad I did. I went alone because what I knew, before I even boarded the plane, was that this was not a trip I could share. Not that day and not in that place. There are things that need to move through you in silence, without having to manage anyone else’s grief alongside your own. Auschwitz was one of them.
I have thought about that trip many times since, and about what it taught me about the specific value of traveling alone. Not every trip requires it, but some do. And recognizing the difference is one of the most important decisions a traveler can make so that they have the experience they actually want.
We Are Raised in Togetherness
We are, as a community, raised in the idea that the most important moments of life are shared ones. Shabbat tables that fill, simchas that grow larger every year, a cultural inheritance built around the gathering. There is enormous beauty in that. There is also, for many of us, a particular friction when the desire to travel meets the reality that no one is free, or willing, or able to come along. And so we wait, and the trip just keeps not happening.
What I have watched, across years of planning travel for clients across every stage of life, is this: the people who stop waiting and simply go are almost universally grateful. Not just for the destination, but for what happens to them when they travel on their own terms, without compromise, and for the experience they came for.
I grew up traveling with my family, which I adored, and I grew up watching my family argue about where to go next, which I did not adore quite as much. Every road trip had a committee and every decision was a referendum. Someone always wanted to stop at something nobody else cared about. I believe this is partly why I became a travel advisor.
Someone had to be in charge, and I had opinions. It is also, honestly, a significant part of why I travel solo. After a childhood spent in beautiful, loving, spectacularly chaotic family travel, going somewhere alone and just going where I want to go is a kind of joy that does not require any further explanation.
Age Has Nothing to Do With It
Two of my “older” clients have reframed the way I talk about solo travel entirely. The first is a woman who celebrated her 80th birthday on safari in Africa. No companion but with a little hesitation as this was her first solo trip without her husband. She did have a clear vision of how she wanted to mark that milestone, and she refused to let the logistics of finding someone to come along dilute it. We planned everything together, she went, and she came back with photographs and memories that will be with her and in her family for generations and a particular quality of aliveness that everyone around her noticed immediately.
The second is a man also in his 80s, who has been quietly collecting solo trips for years. Mexico most recently. He is not making a philosophical statement, he is simply a person who loves to travel and who has discovered that going alone lets him move precisely as he wants to move. He does not have to explain himself to anyone. He does not have to slow down or speed up. The trip is his, completely.
I share these two because I know how many people in our community, particularly those who are widowed or divorced, or whose friends and family simply do not share their particular appetite for travel, feel that solo travel is somehow not for them. That it is a young person’s game, or they will be too lonely, or it will be too much to navigate alone. None of that is true. The desire to see the world on your own terms does not expire, and neither does your ability to act on it.
The Places That Require Your Whole Heart
There is a category of travel that is almost impossible to do well in a group unless all the travelers have the same goals and even then there are times when you just want to stand alone and “feel” all the feelings without anyone else’s opinion or thoughts, and heritage travel falls squarely into it. I am not talking about the logistics, though those matter. I am talking about the emotional bandwidth required to be fully present at a site of profound significance, where history is not a backdrop but the whole story, and where your personal relationship to that history is your own and no one else’s.
When I stood at Auschwitz-Birkenau, I needed to be able to stay as long as I needed to stay and move at whatever pace the weight of the place required. Going alone gave me all of that. It was not a pleasant trip in any conventional sense but I will carry it with me for the rest of my life.
I have had clients who felt exactly the same way about Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. About the Jewish quarter of Budapest’s seventh district, where the Dohany Street Synagogue stands as the largest in Europe and where the weight of what was nearly lost is palpable in every stone. Also about the Warsaw Ghetto memorial and the ancient cities of Morocco, where Jewish life flourished for centuries and where the remnants of that life are still visible in the architecture, the cemeteries, the synagogues that remain.
The Heritage Destinations Worth Going Alone For.
Jewish history is not confined to one geography. It runs through the streets of Eastern Europe, through the medinas of North Africa, through the Iberian Peninsula where Sephardic communities thrived before the expulsion, through the living, breathing complexity of Israel, and through destinations most travelers have never thought to connect to Jewish heritage at all. Here are the ones I know most deeply and recommend most often.
Solo but Not Alone: How to Go with Support.
Going alone does not mean going without a net. This is perhaps the most important thing I want to communicate to anyone who is considering a solo trip and whose hesitation is about safety or logistics rather than desire.
For first-time solo travelers, I usually recommend the “solo but not alone” groups where you have the option of either visiting sites or go on excursions on your own, or join the group.
As destinations go, the safest and most consistently rewarding solo destinations for women include Iceland, where the combination of extraordinary landscape and virtually zero violent crime makes independent exploration feel genuinely free rather than anxious. Japan, with its extraordinary hospitality culture and flawless infrastructure; Portugal, warm and walkable and deeply welcoming to solo travelers; and New Zealand, where the natural environment is spectacular and the ease of independent movement is unmatched.
The key to solo travel is private guides and thoughtful ground operators. Not a group tour with a script, but a person who knows the history deeply, who can read what you need in a given moment, and who understands that some visitors need silence and others need context and most need both at different points in the same day. I know these people in every destination I send clients to. Finding them is a significant part of what I do.
Working with a travel advisor for a solo trip is not a contradiction. It is, if anything, even more valuable for the solo traveler than for anyone else. I take on the logistics, the safety architecture, the research that would otherwise keep you up at night. I build the itinerary around the experience you are looking for, not around a template, and I am available when something unexpected happens, because something unexpected almost always happens, and having someone in your corner when it does is the difference between a story you laugh about later and a trip that goes genuinely sideways.
“Going alone does not mean going without support. It means going on your own terms, with someone who has thought through everything so you do not have to.”
Two destinations come up constantly when clients in our community ask me about traveling alone: Southern Africa and Mexico, especially Oaxaca. Both are, in my direct experience and in the experience of the specialists I work with, genuinely safe for solo travelers. The safety of both places comes with one important condition: follow the guidance of your tour operator. A good guide is not a luxury or a formality. They know which streets to walk and which to avoid after dark, which areas are calm and which require more awareness, and how to read a situation before it becomes one. Solo travelers who listen to their guides have overwhelmingly positive, secure experiences in both regions. Here is who I trust with that responsibility.
Featured Specialists for Solo Travelers.
Go. The World Is Waiting.
There is a version of you that has already been on this trip in your imagination. You know what you are looking for. The quality of presence you want to bring to a particular place, and history you need to stand inside of and even the food you want to enjoy. The landscape that has been calling to you for longer than you can quite explain.
Stop waiting for someone to come with you. Some trips are made richer by companionship, and those are worth waiting for. But the ones that require your full, undivided heart? Those are yours alone. Book them alone, go alone and come back fulfilled in ways you can’t imagine.
Ready to take the next step to try your hand at traveling solo, email me at [email protected] with your dates and travel style, and I’ll handle the rest. With exclusive local partnerships, insider itineraries, and seamless logistics handling, I’ll transform your destination into your next unforgettable reality. You can also find more information about my agency at www.luxetravelpartner.com.
