The dog that turned solo travel into something else entirely
There is a particular kind of loneliness that can settle in when you are eating alone at a nice restaurant, or sitting by a beautiful lake with no one to point it out to. Writer and traveller Katie Jackson found a quiet solution to that feeling — she started taking her dog, Poppy, everywhere.
Over several years, the two of them have explored Alaska's wilderness, Barcelona's beach clubs, Tuscan wine estates, Caribbean islands and California's coastal highways together. What Jackson discovered was not just a list of dog-friendly hotels. It was a whole different relationship with solo travel itself: the freedom of moving at your own pace, but with a warm, curious companion who also happens to be a magnet for strangers.
"Dogs are natural conversation starters," she writes, and Poppy has sparked chats in hotel lobbies, train stations, parks and restaurants across the world. For anyone who has ever felt the push-pull of wanting solitude and connection at the same time, that sentence lands with unexpected weight.
What the destinations actually offer
The seven places Jackson highlights are genuinely varied, and each one offers a different kind of solo experience.
Alaska is for the adventure-minded — vast, humbling, and full of the kind of quiet that resets your nervous system. She recommends flying into Anchorage, renting a car, and driving to Denali, with a stop at Talkeetna, a small town famous for once having a cat as its honorary mayor. Denali National Park has strict rules about dogs on trails (wildlife protection takes priority), but the adjacent Denali State Park offers more flexibility, including the Curry Ridge Trail with panoramic mountain views.
Barcelona, on the other hand, is social and electric. Jackson took Poppy there specifically to sort out an EU Pet Passport, and ended up falling for the city's energy — dog-friendly beaches, Gaudí's architecture, and even Europe's first water park for dogs, AquaPark Canino, open from June to September. Italy earns its place on the list almost on personality alone: the country is, as Jackson puts it, "dog-obsessed," and café owners and strangers consistently went out of their way to make Poppy feel at home. A lunch at the Ferragamo family's wine estate in Tuscany, where Salvatore Ferragamo Jr. hand-fed Poppy prosciutto, is the kind of detail that sounds made up but is apparently just a Tuesday in rural Italy.
Aruba is Jackson's go-to spring break destination — calm turquoise waters, a thriving dog-friendly restaurant scene, and a small town called San Nicolas that has quietly transformed itself into an open-air mural gallery with over 50 artworks. California's Highway 1 rounds things out as the classic road trip fantasy: winding coastal roads, Big Sur, dog-friendly wineries in Carmel, and the feeling, she writes, of being "the main character in a movie."
Why this matters for a solo travel audience in India
India's solo travel culture is growing fast, and so is pet ownership — particularly among urban millennials and Gen Z who have adopted dogs during and after the pandemic years. Yet travelling within India with a pet remains genuinely complicated. Most hotels outside of boutique and luxury properties still turn animals away. Train travel with dogs requires a separate luggage van booking and a fair amount of paperwork. Long-distance flights within India with pets in cabin are not permitted on most carriers.
But the gap is slowly closing. A handful of pet-friendly homestays have appeared in hill stations like Coorg, Kasauli and Mukteshwar. Some boutique properties in Goa and Pondicherry now actively market themselves to pet owners. Platforms that aggregate pet-friendly stays in India are beginning to find an audience.
What Jackson's experience points to, beyond the specific destinations, is a mindset shift worth borrowing. Travelling with a pet forces you to slow down — you cannot rush through a place the same way — and it opens up conversations with locals that might never happen otherwise. For solo travellers in India who find the country's social fabric both wonderful and occasionally overwhelming, a dog might be exactly the kind of companion that makes the balance feel right: present, uncomplicated, and entirely unbothered by the itinerary.