The hardest part is just booking the ticket
There is a particular kind of anxiety that arrives the moment you search for a single-occupancy room and realise no one is coming with you. It is not fear exactly — it is more like the unfamiliar weight of your own company. For many of us, especially in India where travel is almost always a group sport — family trips, friend circuits, college reunions — the idea of going somewhere purely for yourself can feel oddly selfish, even lonely.
But what happens when you simply go anyway, mild anxiety and wanderlust both packed into the same bag?
That is precisely what one traveller discovered on a solo trip to Oaxaca City in Mexico — a journey that started with hesitation and ended with something that felt a lot like self-trust.
A festival, a mansion, and a lot of mezcal
The traveller checked into Grana BNB, a former mansion converted into a bed and breakfast in Oaxaca's state capital — the kind of place with genuinely good service that makes a solo guest feel looked after rather than conspicuous. The timing turned out to be serendipitous: the city was mid-celebration of La Guelaguetza, an annual festival built around the idea of communal reciprocity — giving, sharing, receiving.
For four days, that spirit was impossible to miss. Daily performances, parades, museums, and the region's two great signatures — mezcal and mole — filled every hour. There was no one to negotiate an itinerary with, no compromises to make. Just a person, a city, and whatever came next.
On day three, she hiked up to Hierve el Agua to see one of only two petrified waterfalls in the world. Grueling, by her own admission. Completely worth it.
Why this matters for a solo travel audience in India
India has an enormous and quietly growing community of solo travellers — particularly women — who are rewriting what a holiday can look like. From solo treks in Spiti to solo weekends in Pondicherry's French Quarter, the infrastructure and the appetite are both there. What is still catching up is the cultural permission.
Stories like this one matter because they are honest about the anxiety and generous about the reward. Solo travel is not about being brave or performing independence for an Instagram caption. It is about discovering, sometimes over mezcal and sometimes over chai, that your own judgment about what to do next is actually pretty good.
La Guelaguetza's central idea — communal reciprocity, the act of giving and receiving openly — is also a quietly radical frame for solo travel. You arrive without your usual group identity. The place, and the people in it, meet you as just yourself. That exchange, it turns out, is its own kind of generous.