This is a selfie taken, I think, in Damascus. I went on a month-long trip to Beirut, Lebanon to visit a wonderful missionary family in February 2008. While I was there, I had the opportunity to go on a day trip to Damascus. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity - who knows when tourists will return to beautiful Syria?
Reading Eat, pray, love has made me reflect on my own experiences of travelling solo. The first time was probably when I was 20; I went travelling in China with a friend, but she had to leave a week early. I spent a week in Beijing on my own. I was nervous, but it was fantastic. During that week I managed to leave a bag containing my debit card on a bus, leave my passport in a department store, and run out of Chinese currency, the nearest place I could change money being a bus ride away. I had to look in every pocket for coins to scrape together for the bus fare. But, you know, if I had been with someone else they would have been tearing their hair out; being on my own, I figured it out and everything was ok.
In my mid-twenties I was teaching, and had to take holiday at specific times (I know, no teacher gets sympathy for this!). I am no planner, and tended suddenly to realise three weeks before the summer holiday started that I wanted to go somewhere. Clearly, at three weeks' notice, I wasn't going to be able to find anyone to go with me. So I went alone. One year I had a lovely short break in Edinburgh, wandering up and down the Royal Mile and hanging out in Princes Street Gardens. Another year I spent a week in Northumberland, exploring the rugged coastline, eating alone in restaurants and doing the Harry Potter tour at Alnwick Castle. It was during that trip I first went to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, where I have since gone back several times on retreat.
The most important piece of solo travel I have undertaken was in 2009, a confusing, painful and difficult year. I had left teaching to explore God's call to Christian ministry, but I seemed to have hit a dead end. I was hurting, I had hurt others, and I was having huge difficulty processing all these painful emotions. I had recently inherited some money from my grandfather, so even though I was out of work and broke, I could afford a holiday. One thing I had always wanted to do as a student was interrailing so, on two weeks' notice, I decided to do it. An Interrail pass allows you unlimited travel on trains within a certain region, and for the most part you don't even have to book the trains. It gives you great flexibility in planning an intinerary and allows you to explore a wide area cheaply. I had never been to Germany, Switzerland or Austria, so my itinerary took in all three countries. I borrowed my brother's enormous rucksack, which I could barely lift, in which to carry all I would need for three weeks. I bought a large stack of books and read them all during the trip. I drank Belgian beer in Brussels; I visited the Holocaust memorial in Berlin; I wandered round fabulous art galleries in Dresden and Munich; I visited the street where my grandmother was born in Vienna; I paid nearly £10 for a sandwich in Zurich. At the start of the trip it was not all pleasure and fun - I thought a lot about my situation and my choices and it really, really hurt. But as the days and weeks went on, the time alone healed me. I cannot claim that it was a time of deep prayer and seeking God, but perhaps he knew what I needed and gave me the opportunity when I needed it.
Solo travel isn't for everyone, but I have loved it.
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