During the first exciting moments of planning a new journey, before the mad Googling begins, I like to crack open a guidebook (heeeey, Rick Steves), and savor the introduction. How thrilling it is to imagine visiting these exotic lands, wandering amongst priceless painting, sipping tea in colorful squares or hiking through verdant jungles.

I’ve noticed a trend, though. After reading descriptions of mountains, monuments and medinas, it seems to me that travel writers tend to fall back on a common trope to conclude their introduction: an urgent and heartfelt declaration that the best, the most priceless experience you can hope to have on your trip is to have an authentic experience with the local people. As in, talk to strangers. Make merry.  Develop deeply meaningful friendships while in a totally new surrounding, jet-lagged and confused. Have soul-searching conversations over a campfire, even if you can’t figure out how to ask where the bathroom is. Yikes. Even my buddies (ha, as if) at the New York Times Travel section have picked up on this phenomenon, puzzling over the “mystical local” who is supposed to show you where all the good street food is.

Then, as I continued with my research, I found a second common theme: advice and anecdotes about befriending fellow travelers. These new relationships usually start in hostel common rooms and culminated with tequila-fueled karaoke in Kuala Lampur with, you guessed it, friendly locals. It seemed to me, in my expansive research, that the equation to a successful and memorable adventure was Befriending Locals + New Travel Buddies=BEST TRIP EVER.

Combine these pressure-packed messages from guidebooks with the relentless Instagram posts depicting candy-colored traveling utopias, and the meaning is clear: if you aren’t partying at midnight with the locals in the most off-the-beaten track bar in a colorful, casually sexy jumper thing with a jaunty hat before going back to your impossibly cheap bunk…you aren’t having the maximum experience. That there is a “right” way to travel and an ideal type of traveler. In today’s travel-industrial complex, this person is a hostel-staying, late-night partying extrovert. A photogenic one.

So the only way to have a great trip is to put myself out there and…gulp…make conversation with strangers? And look good doing it? Really? And…how exactly do I do that?

“Start Conversations!”….Like It’s So Easy.

As an introvert perfectionist who currently owns no unwrinkled clothing, this narrow definition of the beautiful, gregarious, ideal traveler is my worst nightmare. I want to have meaningful, authentic experiences when I travel. I really do. And it’s not that I don’t want to be friendly and talk to residents of the places I’m visiting. On the contrary, I’m deeply curious about their way of life and how things work in the place they call home. I love burying myself in the Wikipedia minutia of how foreign governments work, the history of a place, and fun facts about the local transit system. The idea of chatting with a teacher in a foreign country makes me jump up and down. I would love nothing more than to sit and chat with a native…as long as it was during the day, and I could go back to my non-hostel lodgings, decompress, read, and wander around for a while by myself before going to bed at a reasonable hour. However, the idea of striking up a conversation with a total stranger is something that makes me cringe at home, where I speak the language and rule the proverbial roost. I just can’t imagine that people going about their lives want to talk to some random tourist girl, much less invite her to coffee. I wish I had the personality and the bravery to enter a room and make pals within 10 minutes, but I just don’t. I worry this is a strike against me, and all of my fellow awkward folks, during travel.  

Hostels Are Scary…And Not Just Because Of The Bathrooms

Speaking of entering a room and making new friends, when I was planning my great adventure around the globe, I really wanted to become a Hostel Person. Hostel People are cool. They go with the flow. They save a ton of money on lodging for more important things like snacks. I felt like I could be a Hostel Person because I really like camping and don’t mind peeing in bushes out in the wilderness in the slightest. Also, I’m a teacher. I am (sometimes) cool as a cucumber in chaos and crowds. If I can handle doing my business in the bushes and spend my days with rambunctious pre-teens, surely I can handle a hostel. However, I’ve been traveling for over a month now, and we just checked out of our first hostel–a day early. Like, we lost money because I didn’t want to be there anymore.

Why? Simply put, hostels are a thorny obstacle course for the average introvert. I had prepared myself for icky showers, loud neighbors, and a funny smells. But I never thought about the social aspect. Which, in retrospect, duh. From navigating the common room to breakfast conversation to bunk politics to feeling rude for sitting there with your headphones in, the community-oriented nature of a hostel makes them a paradise for the extrovert, but tricky for an introvert.

Our (very nice, highly rated) hostel made me feel that all of my years and experiences were peeled off and it was the first day of middle school again: insecure, trembling, and desperately wanting to skulk off somewhere by myself and read a fat book. I couldn’t relax there because navigating the communal waters and the “are we doing this right?” worries left me exhausted and prickly.

So we left a day early and fled to a peaceful Air BnB in Sarajevo. After a glass of wine (okay, several),  I tried to figure out what my problem was. After all, through a year of research, reading umpteen travel blogs and books, I have been taught that good world travelers stay at hostels and make friends with fellow travelers and locals alike. Why wasn’t I getting all of those warm and fuzzy feelings? Was I really going to let feelings of social anxiety impact my journey? Didn’t I take this adventure to get outside of my comfort zone? After canceling all subsequent hostel plans and rejiggering our budget (damn it! Those bunk beds were so cheap!), I felt like a boring backpacking failure.

But why? I fear that too often, traveling introverts are made to feel this way: because we aren’t as comfortable striking up conversations, because we need alone time, because we feel awkward posing for cute pictures, because the idea of bunking down in a room full of strangers is one long, full body cringe, it somehow means that we aren’t doing this whole vagabonding thing right. The myth of the extrovert traveler is a powerful one, and I was failing miserably at it.

Travel As Self-Improvement, Not Self-Transformation

Then I started thinking about travel, and what we demand from it. Do we undertake journeys not just to see new things, but to be new people–at least temporarily? I took a year off from my job. I expect some bang for my buck. I  was subconsciously putting immense pressure on myself to not only squeeze out every last drop every day, see the most incredible sights, and eat the most incredible foods, but to experience internal transformation as well. No wonder I had an existential crisis at a random hostel!

The truth is, there is a BIG difference between self improvement and trying to become someone you’re not. Don’t get me wrong: I have a ton of projects I’m enthusiastically pursuing in the absence of meaningful employment: I’m trying to read a book about every country we visit (Anna Karenina was an….unwise choice for Russia), I’m journaling every day, attempting to up my yoga game, and of course, I have this blog. But those are self-improvement assignments, not a complete inner overhaul. Frankly, living out of a backpack and upending every aspect of my life is stressful enough without beating myself up for not conforming to the standard of an extroverted traveler. Everyone who has an I stuck at the front of their Meyers-Briggs profile needs to combat the idea that authentic, meaningful travel is the domain of the extroverts. Ultimately, traveling is a deeply personal and individual journey. It is self-indulgent, expensive as hell, and invaluable whether you are the life of the party or hiding in the bathroom of the party. There is no one way to see the world, and there is no “best” style in the millions of moments modern-day pilgrims experience…no matter what Instagram and all it’s filters tries to tell you.

We all see this big, fascinating, scary planet with different kaleidoscope-colored glasses, and what is my nightmare is another’s magic carpet ride. I’ve come to realize the best travel joys come not from personality type, budget, or being “good” at traveling but from pure luck. My day in Lake Plitvice was one of the most spellbinding experience I’ve ever had, and it was because the pouring rain happened to keep the crowds away and brought out the deepest turquoise tones in this wonderland–NOT because I suddenly transformed into Cool Girl Traveler. Luck gave me a once-in-a-lifetime day, not my disposition, a wise local guide, or new travel friends.

Love The Trip You Are On

During the planning process and on an actual trip, there is so much pressure to have that perfect, carefree, visually stunning, sophisticated adventure. A few weeks ago, while we were walking down the moonlit cobblestones of Prague, we realized that succumbing to travel pressure won’t make either of us happy. Sure, we could have stayed here or there longer. Sure, we should have gone to that museum or that beer garden. Sure, we should enjoy hostels. But we didn’t, and we don’t, and focusing on the trip we weren’t having was robbing us of the joy of the journey we were having. We came up with a new mantra right then and there: love the trip you are on.

So I’m dropping any impossible notions that I need to drastically change my personality and revamp my comfort zone to find meaning in my journey.  I’m going to love the trip I’m on. I’m going to stop putting pressure on this experience to somehow give me a personality transplant to fit a traveler stereotype. Travel isn’t some weird accelerated therapy to make you into a person that you’re not and were never going to be.  I can push myself to be more friendly… but that doesn’t mean I’m ever going to be the kind of person who enjoys the hostel environment. Chatting it up in a common room is never going to be my thing, but I’m glad that experience exists for others. My own smaller, quieter joys are not boring or lame in the communal travel dialogue. My solo afternoon of sipping thick coffee at a Bosnian cafe and reading my Kindle on a rickety sidewalk table is, to me, just as memorable as bar-hopping in Bangkok with a pack of new hostel buddies.

I most likely won’t have lifelong friends around the world at the end of this: I’m too much of a hermit. But I will have smells, sounds, sights, smiling pictures in uncool outfits, and a journal full of thoughts. At the end of this, honestly, I don’t want to be someone different. I like who I am. In running away to the world, I am not running away from myself. Just hostels.