It has been almost 15 years since I discovered how much I LOVE traveling around our gorgeous planet Earth: I love it so much that I also decided to make my mission to work while traveling full-time!
During the years, I’ve been traveling in all kinds of ways (by plane, by feet, by buses, by tuk-tuks, crammed jeeps, and hitchhiking) and in all kind of styles (as a broken backpacker when younger, as a tourist when I did not know what traveling truly was and why it is so important, and at a much slower pace now with our self-built campervan!
In addition to that, in the past decade and half, I had the chance to experience traveling solo, with a buddy, with my girlfriend, in small groups and larger groups too!
Every way of traveling solo or with different party combinations has its pros, its cons, and it impacts the way we live and experience traveling in its unique way.
Solo traveling for example is ideal to have time to self-reflect, to go at your own pace, and feel free as a butterfly!
Traveling with other people can be much funnier and safer, but at the same time requires some compromises to ripe the benefits (and also a good choice of the person you’re traveling with! 😉
In this article, I thought of analyzing the benefits of traveling with a travel buddy (it does not necessarily have to be your girlfriend/bf, but can also be a good friend or simply another person with the same passions and objectives as yours!).
Pro tip: if you don’t have a friend sharing your dreams, with a quick look online you can find passionate travelers looking also for a travel buddy online, and plan itineraries everywhere in the world together! We live in 2024, and if you don’t want to travel alone, now you don’t have to anymore, finding someone and joining adventures is super-easy! ;D
Let’s dive right in, and let’s cast some light on why traveling with a buddy might enrich your travels and make them more memorable! 😀
What are the Benefits
of Traveling with another Person? 🙂
1. Traveling in Two is Cheaper,
as you can Share many Costs
When on the road, there are always costs that you can share and make traveling cheaper with another person.
Think for example of sharing the cost of a hotel room, a taxi ride, fuel for your vehicle, a private tour guide, a combo-meal, a beach umbrella or simply grocery shopping for cooking together.
Traveling with a buddy, undoubtedly can be much cheaper than traveling alone in many aspects!
Said that, of course, you’ll need to take into account that by traveling with another person, you’re much more likely to spend money on other social activities (such as eating out, having a drink at a bar, joining a tour/activity the other person is interested into etc.).
So, if your objective is saving money to travel further, be mindful of carefully choosing a travel buddy with the same goals as yours! ;D
2. Traveling with a Buddy,
it can be a much Funnier Experience!
If you’re the solar social-animal type (like me!), you will easily agree with me that traveling with a buddy can be a much fun experience!
When you travel, you are somehow experiencing the new, and by observing things that are outside your “usual normality”, your mind will start having fun trying to create new patterns, logic, and connections.
On this new attempt to rationalize reality, your stimulated brain will undoubtedly find something funny: how sad would it be not to share your thoughts, realizations, and newly-created jokes with a travel buddy?
By traveling in two, everything is twice as funny: think of all the inside jokes that only you too would understand, experiencing misadventures together, trying to pronounce and mispronouncing foreign words together (hilarious!), haggling with style, or simply making embarrassing moments more bearable by laughing them out 🙂
Last but not least, by traveling in two you can get much funnier photos that you could not take alone too! 😀
3. Happiness is real only when Shared
This is a famous concept quoted from the movie Into the Wild, a milestone movie for any passionate travel-lover based on the real story of Christopher McCandless, an American boy who adventured alone into the wilderness of Alaska in search of freedom.
On his dying day, alone, Christopher left the writing “Happiness is real, only when shared” in his diary, as a memento to all travelers to don’t forget the importance of sharing with others our happiness (which in turn make it truly what it is!).
When you travel with a buddy, you experience things together and you create memories together.
Fast-forward years, and you’ll be happy to meet them again and see what they remember (which for sure will be partially different from what you remember, as everyone focused on different details!).
Moments that are lived in two and shared experiences, feel more real and meaningful as they will be treasured by both of you!
Memories of my solo travels are also great, but I believe that somehow they feel like they’re fading faster: when they leave your brain, they are gone!
Memories of shared experiences might instead be recovered after a year thanks to the other person’s memory, which in turn makes having a travel buddy all the more worthwhile 😀
4. You Will have more Chances (and be pushed!)
to Try new Experiences
When you travel with someone, you will not only be doing what you want to do or feel like doing.
No matter how similar your buddy you are, there will always be different interests on which you’ll have to compromise and that will change your route: a different hiking path, a different restaurant choice, an additional tour, a mode of transport instead of another, etc.
Exploring things you would not normally choose to do, is not inherently bad: on the contrary!
If you take it with an open mind, exploring another person’s passions might bring you in contact with novelties, make you discover the world from a new perspective, and experiencing things you never did before!
Aren’t those all the reasons why you choose to travel in the first place? 😉
5. Having a Travel Buddy
makes Traveling Safer
Traveling in two is most of the time much safer than traveling alone (the exception is, if your travel buddy is a di**head, but I don’t wish that to anyone ahah – sadly happened to me a few times..).
The situations where you can guard your shoulders are several: keep an eye on the luggage in the airport, watch out for pick-pocketers in crowded streets, discourage thieves from robbing at night, scream out and call for help in case of danger, etc.
Accepting to be “fragile” and showing that fragility to others is also the beauty of traveling solo.
Said that, if you feel you’re not in the phase of your life when you want to go THAT much out of your comfort zone, joining adventures with a travel companion might be the right choice for you: you’ll experience the same, but with less risk, and you’ll always have by your side an extra “sixth-sense” of protection to count on! 😀
6. When Problems arise,
two heads are better than one!
Problems do arise when traveling.
Not ALL the time, but 99,9% of the time!
It can be a broken wheel, a broken vehicle, a lost or broken luggage… and then again missing a flight, falling and getting hurt, getting scammed, having problems communication, problems with a Visa, problems with a credit card not working, internet not working, pickpocketing, feeling sick…
All of these happened to me over the years, and they can surely happen to anyone!
If you want adventures, you need to be in for misadventures too: this is traveling after all!
With the right mentality, making the best out of adversity is the best approach you can take in those situations.
Sadly, when problems arise far from home, sometimes it feels like the world is crushing us and it’s easy to start freaking out and making a small problem into a too much unbearable one.
Having a travel buddy with you can greatly help you to give you emotional safeness, to put things into perspective, to stay focused, and to find alternative solutions to problems.
As the proverb says: “common sorrow, is a half joy” ;D
7. With a Travel Buddy,
you can get Emotional Support
Linking to the previous point, a special benefit of traveling with someone else is the emotional safety and support you can get from him/her.
Traveling is a journey of discovery and self-discovery, where not everything goes as planned both outside and inside of you.
Discomfort moments are part of traveling too, and different persons react to them in different ways.
For some, staying alone is sufficient to overtake them.
For others, having someone to trust and to speak with, is a blessing.
Sometimes, all you need is just a little push, a little shift in perspective, or simply throwing out an issue to empty your head. In all these cases, traveling with a partner can help you overtake those bumps on the road and keep going stronger! 🙂
8. You can Share Responsibilities
and Get Itineraries Done Faster!
If you trust your buddy and share responsibilities, traveling in two can be much faster than traveling alone!
“I cook, you prepare the itinerary.”
“I clean, you make the backpack.”
“You check the hotel, I check the restaurant.”
“You go booking the tour, I go grocery shopping.”
“You go ask for beers, while I go to the toilet” ;D
Of course, it’s not always like this (sometimes you might encounter buddies that are professional time-wasters! ahah), but with the right person, be sure you will be able to travel more while working less 😀
9. It’s like traveling
with a Personal Photographer!
Yes, to make ourselves a photo there are tripods, yes there are selfy sticks, yes there are even drones… but let’s be honest: how often do we use them when traveling alone? I am sure your answer would be too: “Not as much as I would like!“.
Having someone close to us when we travel and simply ask to take a snap on the spot is the easiest, fastest, and most convenient way to get a memory picture “right there, right now”.
Are you into photography and do you like more curated pictures? In this case, also, having someone with you might be of great help if you want to appear in the picture or you would like to have a person in your frame.
By joining forces with a travel buddy, you’ll get at the same time both a professional photographer and a personal photo model! ;D
10. With four eyes,
you will See more than Alone!
“Look at that!”
“Have you seen this?!”
“I have read that…”
“OMG look what’s going on!”
“Wait… can you hear it?!”
When traveling in two, your senses double: you’ll have four eyes and four ears instead of only two, and that increases the chances of spotting details you would otherwise miss.
When you think about it rationally, it is quite incredible: when you travel alone, at any time you are always watching those 180° only that our eyes can see: you’re not seeing half of the things that happen around you!
Traveling with a buddy won’t surely give you a 360° perspective, but it can surely be an incredible improvement to your overall perspective and environmental awareness 😀
Conclusion
And here we are at the end of the article! 🙂
In this post, we have seen 10 benefits of traveling in two 😀
All in all, sharing adventures with a travel buddy can make your wandering experience much cheaper, funnier, happier faster, safer, and richer, all while making your memories much brighter and long-lasting.
Before going I would like to ask you:
- Did you enjoy the read?
- What do you like and dislike about traveling with a travel buddy? 🙂
- Do you have any other benefit that could make it on the list?
LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW! (We always love receiving feedback and exchanging a chat 🙂
Last but not least, before going, I will leave you here some articles you might want to check out too:
- Discover the Beauty of Italy and its Countless Hidden Gems
- Guides and Curiosities about Destinations around the World
- Our Travel Blogs, Travel Curiosities and Inspiration (by LostOnTheRoute)
As always, thank you for reading,
And see you in the next article! 😀
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