When the city hits before the anxiety does
Most people who travel alone will tell you about the fear — the moment at the airport, the silent check-in, the first meal eaten without company. But for Stacey Chia, arriving solo in Mexico City, it wasn't fear that arrived first. It was the altitude.
At more than 2,200 metres above sea level, Mexico City is one of the highest major capitals in the world. Chia found herself breathless just climbing the stairs to her Airbnb — briefly convinced, as she writes, that she had developed a sudden heart condition while alone in a foreign city. The moment she remembered what altitude actually does to the body, something shifted. The anxiety loosened. The city moved in.
That small, almost comic moment — panic replaced by curiosity — is really the whole story of solo travel, isn't it?
Tacos, Frida and the texture of a city alone
Mexico City rewards the solo traveller in specific ways. You notice more. You slow down at the right corners. You eat where the locals eat because there's no one to veto the hole-in-the-wall taco stall. The city's cultural weight — the legacy of Frida Kahlo, the murals, the markets — lands differently when you're processing it entirely on your own terms, at your own pace.
Travelling alone in a dense, layered city like this isn't about isolation. It's about the quality of attention you bring to a place when no one else is shaping the itinerary. You find connection in unexpected places: a vendor who explains what's in your food, a fellow traveller at a hostel breakfast, a neighbourhood that pulls you off your planned route entirely.
Why this matters for a solo travel audience in India
India has seen a quiet but real surge in solo travel — particularly among women and young professionals stepping out for the first time on their own, whether domestically or internationally. The anxiety Chia describes at that Mexico City staircase is deeply familiar: the first solo hotel check-in in Jaipur, the first solo train journey to the hills, the first time you sit alone at a restaurant and order exactly what you want.
What stories like hers remind us is that the discomfort of solo travel is almost always brief, and almost always worth it. The altitude passes. The city opens up. And the version of yourself that figures it out — breathless, slightly panicked, then quietly thrilled — is the version you were trying to find all along.
If Mexico City can be navigated alone, so can the next trip you've been putting off. Start smaller if you need to. But start.