How to Be More Outgoing & Make More Friends

Some travelers actually hate traveling. But they keep doing it anyway.

Or maybe that was a bit click-bait-y. Rather more accurate would be: Some travelers get sick of traveling, but they do it anyway.

I meet a lot of them.

I’ve met backpackers who are my age (in their thirties) who said they were sick of traveling, but they just didn’t know what else to do.

Mostly they were single women. They found it hard to travel alone, to not have a partner with them.

I also met digital nomads who said they felt so lonely that travel turned out to be so disappointing they constantly fantasized about quitting and going home.

I’ve read tons of posts in solo female travel groups where women are anonymously posting that they can’t meet people, they feel awkward traveling alone, and they’re thinking about cutting their trip short because of it. Every post gets hundreds of comments with others saying they are/have been in the same boat.

So why is it so hard for so many people to travel alone?

I think it boils down to 2 main things.

People don’t know what they actually like to do, and how they like to do it, outside of what online resources and guides say is best.

When I first left to travel in 2018, I also didn’t know what I liked or what I wanted, so I obviously consorted with the internet to see what people recommended to do in Barcelona (that was my first destination).

I honestly spent a couple weeks there pretty bored.

I went to look at all the famous sights, and occasionally chatted with the owner of my Airbnb. Got hit on in awkward ways by her cousin. Downloaded Tinder and went out with a guy I didn’t really like a couple of times. Went to the beach and couldn’t swim because I was too scared my stuff would get stolen while I was in the water.

So I decided Barcelona wasn’t for me.

I got on the train and went all the way to the north of the country, to A Coruña. I don’t know why I went there. I just had the idea and I followed it.

That’s where I heard about the Camino de Santiago for the first time. I hiked a portion of it and had a blast. I had a little notebook with me on the hike, and wrote a poem about an abandoned building on the path. I got lost on my way back and had to satisfy my hunger with some potato chips from a convenience store because nothing else was open after dark by the time I found my way.

It was a blast.

That’s when I discovered I really prefer small towns to big cities, and doing outdoor stuff in nature over sightseeing.

I got really into drawing at the time, and whenever I sat alone in a cafe or restaurant, I would practice by sketching people I saw from my corner in the back of the shop.

I decided to rent a car in Braga when I made my way down to Portugal, and did a road trip all the way down the country. One of the best nights was sleeping in my car on the beach when I didn’t feel like looking for a hotel.

Most people online aren’t telling you to do things like this when you travel.

All the blogs and vlogs give you a list of things you need to go see and places you need to visit, while the hostels tape up flyers for their tours they want you to participate in. And while some people fit in well with that, it just doesn’t go over as well for others.

That’s when you have to discover things for yourself. Have your own original ideas.

The other reason is…

People don’t know how to connect with each other.

In hostels it’s obviously easy to meet people, but not everyone wants to stay in hostels.

Personally I detest the shared bunk beds with loud snorers, horny twenty year-olds, and the stinky smell of multiple unwashed bodies. Besides, hostels almost never allow cats in the dorms anyway.

So I made myself become more outgoing.