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Bon Voyage

By , Somerville, MA
First question: How many times have you traveled to another country? Second question: How many times have you traveled abroad by yourself? There are several people that travel abroad by themselves. In fact, more times than not, you see people walking through the airport solo, and less and less with a companion. What is the right thing to do, travel with people or by yourself?

From personal experience, traveling with other seems like the right decision. I remember the first time I went to Greece it was about a 14-hour trip; I was only nine years old. As soon as my family and I checked in our baggage the whole entire Logan Airport electricity went out. We were stuck inside the airport for over ten hours. It was dreadful, but luckily I had my family there to keep me company and play games with. Even though I was only nine years old at the time, I could only imagine doing that now by myself. Who would I talk to? Who would keep me company and buy me food? It would be beyond awful.

Traveling with people is the way to go. There are so many pros traveling with other people. For instance, if you get sick you have someone to take care of you, you’ll always have someone to share your experiences with, but especially you are safer together. Surprisingly, many people prefer to travel by themselves. However, these people don’t know what they’re risking when they travel alone. More often than not you don’t know what situation you’re going to fly into. For all you know you could be going to this great vacation spot and over night a war could break out or even worse a natural disaster could occur. Who would really want to face that on their own?

Let’s take India for example; it is a beautiful vacation spot. You could visit their beaches or even many of their cultural landmarks. However, on December 26th 2004, a massive tsunami occurred out of nowhere. It killed more than 250,000 people, left 1.7 million homeless, and affected over 18 countries. Say if you were traveling alone to India, who would really want to face a tsunami all by themselves? Of course people think that a disaster could never happen to them, but it can happen to anyone and I’m positive that people would rather be with their loved ones at a time of distress.

There’s no question about it that traveling with someone is the better option. I’m sure that a lot of people would prefer to travel by themselves for many reasons. A few reasons could be: doing whatever you want without having the hassle of someone else’s needs, the fact that you will meet new people, and most importantly, because it could challenge your fears and insecurities and it’ll give you a sense of “freedom.” These people only see the bright side to traveling alone; nevertheless there are always many consequences with traveling alone.
Let’s take for instance James Foley. Not many people know, however he was abducted in Syria over a year and a half ago while doing his job, which was a freelancer journalist. No one knows where he is until this day, which is terribly scary especially for his family. The even scarier part is that he even got arrested and held in captivity the year before that. Now I know there are many pros to traveling by yourself and minding your own business, however that wasn’t the best choice for James now was it?

Let’s go back about a month or so shall we? Flight 370 has been missing for over a month with 239 passengers on board, which is nearly impossible for this day and age. There is only an idea of where the plane is, no one exactly knows where it is till this day. Authorities don’t even know why or how the plane went missing. Some theories are that the plane got hijacked or even one of the pilots committed suicide. Let’s say if you were traveling on that plane all by yourself for vacation, I’m sure you would be 1) scared and 2) you would regret it. No one knows where you are, except for yourself. If you had a family member or a friend traveling along with you it might be a little easier to go through that type of situation than if you were to be traveling alone.

Traveling alone in my eyes is like a lost baby bawling its eyes out, it is simply terrifying. I would never travel alone. I know that some people look at this otherwise; however it would be a very lonely and scary trip if I ever had to do it. Never travel alone, because you never know what might happen!

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