Aelfgifu Travels

Traveling alone? See some brief top tips below to help.

1. Book a sociable hostel. If you are someone to want to meet other travellers when away, have a look into hostels with a specific focus on the ‘sociability’ or ‘atmosphere’ of them – this can be seen on websites such as ‘Hostel World’: https://www.hostelworld.com/ which have a really good review section to help you pick out somewhere with regular hostel-run events.
2. Make sure your luggage suits your size and physique. Be wary of how much luggage you have being alone. This may seem an obvious point to say but I have caught myself in some situations failing this: make sure you are capable of carrying all of it yourself. There may be situations whereby you need to carry everything up and down stairs at train stations or metro stations, where no lift or escalators are available. This is a personal preference – large backpacks may make the most sense for you, but for me I have always preferred a small suitcase (25kg) and a small day rucksack.
3. Make an itinerary (even if brief) and give a copy to someone you know. Itineraries are important when solo travelling to keep you on track. Even if just a brief outline, it is useful to make sure you don’t stray from seeing and doing what you were planning to. In addition and equally important, giving someone you know and trust (a close friend, parent or sibling) is a good idea so that if anything were to happen, they would know roughly where you are.
   • A quick way to help create this is to utilise Chat GPT! As an example, try asking ‘please give me an itinerary for 2 weeks in Argentina. I would like to see X and Y during that time and not spend more than Z on travel’ and see what it gives you. It most likely won’t be perfect, but it will give you some idea and structure as to how to do it. I sometimes refine further asking ‘I am not interested in seeing X but I would like to go via Y’ for example. Sign up for free here: https://chatgpt.com/
4. Book group tours or walking tours. Quite often there are free walking tours within cities (of course, depending on how remote you opt to go!) whereby you only tip the tour guide at the end what you believe the tour was worth. A good website to find these tours is linked here: https://www.guruwalk.com/. I would usually settle for a tip of about £10 worth in the equivalent currency, which seemed to go down well. Whilst this is optional, it is very much expected as per the tour set-up.
   • Another great sight to book group tours is linked here: https://www.viator.com/. Once you have found a tour you are particularly interested in, it is always worth looking around online to check comparable prices. Viator is good as the reviews are usually very detailed and include a lot of pictures, so you can get a feel for if it is something you are interested in.

I will have a post on some essential safety tips from experiences I have learnt from in the past, so please stay tuned for that coming soon. 

Keep climbing mountains,

Aelfgifu