I recently tested positive for COVID. Thankfully, I am asymptomatic and safely quarantining, but this experience brings me back to my first encounter with illness during my sabbatical. It was in Huaraz, where this newsletter left off, and where I started to reflect on the highs and lows of solo travel.
While Huaraz is one of my most favorite stops of all of Peru, it didn’t start that way.
Thanks to a few rounds of pisco sour baptizing new friendships at Trujillo, a last minute boarding of an overnight bus, and a propensity to motion sickness, I arrived at Huaraz very dehydrated and miserable. I had a hard time carrying my own luggage off the bus.
My phone had also died, so dollop a good amount of anxiety on top of the no-good morning I was already having. I had to rely on a taxi driver’s generosity to use his phone to guess at the hostel I had booked, and then the receptionist’s faith in my word that I had a reservation even though he couldn’t find it in his system and I couldn’t provide a confirmation number at the time.
The no-good morning progressed to a terrible day overall, because altitude sickness hit me like a truck. Huaraz is 3,000 m above sea level, the highest I had ever been. I was extremely tired and dizzy, in the brief periods I was awake. I was also still recovering from some digestion problems, maybe residual effects from ayahuacua that was re-ignited by the motion sickness. That’s why in the first two days of being at a city surrounded by ranges of mountains, the only views I enjoyed were my bedroom and the bathroom.
Like I said, Huaraz had a really shit start.
The streets of Huaraz as crowded as the company I kept during my stay.
That first day in Huaraz, I acutely remember having to constantly decide whether to tend to my overwhelming fatigue or my need for water. I knew I needed water, but I doubted if I had the strength to fetch it. At the peak moment where I couldn’t choose between the two, I held a little pity party for myself. I felt so alone and abandoned. And for the first time, I really doubted my decision to travel solo.
As someone who loves people and intimacy, I always thought solo travel was not for me. Where do I look when I’m eating meals? (It depends: depending on the environment, you people watch; depending on your energy level, you space out; depending on how much you enjoy your own company and the present, you tune into the taste and the weight of the moment.) Who do I turn to share extraordinary moments? (You learn to appreciate how existential loneliness is part of even a well-lived life. Or, you accept that you will share your life with not just bosom friends and loyal family, but also strangers you share indeliable memories with and then never see again. Your experience of life is a composite of many people, and not all are meant to stay in your life.)
But as someone with a lot of ambitious travel plans and impatience, solo travel has been the only option, other than to not travel. Regret has always been more tortuous than embarrassment to me, and so here we are.
Like how an overcast sky clears to reveal a majestic range of mountains, my initial difficulties in Huaraz helped change my perspective of my sabbatical. In Huaraz, I experienced how solo travel makes the lows low, and the highs high.
There will be days where you go a long time without having a real conversation with someone, days where you will feel keenly disconnected from the world around you.
There will also be days when you’ll be awed at an intense connection with a stranger at this unlikely intersection of fate. The more different they are, the more unlikely of a pair you make, the more joyful the meeting.
There will be days you are sick, far from everything that is familiar, and from people who would care for you. It makes you doubly unwell with sadness. There will also be days, though, where strangers’ grace and generosity in your moments of vulnerability will heal doubts in humanity.
There will be days where you are your worst enemy, critical of your every fault and mistake. There will be other days where you take your role as your own biggest advocate seriously.
There will be days where you feel exhausted by the simplest tasks, like trying to have conversations with the shopkeeper. There will be days where you’re invigorated by the simplest pleasures, like freshly squeezed juice in the mornings.
There will be days where you become acquainted with a new shade of loneliness. Other days, you discover a new degree of comfort of being alone. On other days, you will coincidentally reunite with familiar faces without any effort on either of your parts.
There will be days where the occasional financial exploitation costs more grace than you can afford in the moment. There will be days where you make precious memories that make all the trouble more than worth it.
There will be days where you will be misunderstood, and you misunderstand others. There will be days where you share shy smiles and synchronized laughter.
There will be days where you feel overwhelmed by how you have to constantly show up. There will be days where you feel satiated by how engaged you feel in every moment and aspect of life. These sensations aren’t exclusive to solo travel life, but you feel them in extremes. The stakes are higher, the rewards more intoxicating.
When solo traveling, there are days that start with difficult mornings and end with magical evenings.
In Huaraz, I contributed a few mistakes that made my life difficult: booking a private hotel room rather than a social hostel, taking a tour entirely in Spanish (which I'm not fluent in), not having enough cash on me, not getting medicine earlier. My biggest mistake, however, was being too hard on myself for not having an ideal experience in every aspect from the very start.
But Huaraz was also the first time I can truly say I felt so proud at how strong and self-sufficient I proved to be. I was able to take care of myself, in sickness and hardship. I experienced new levels of loneliness, and survived. I navigated my first hike all by myself, in a foreign country no less– I, who gets so easily lost and distracted in city streets. I approached the limits of my physicality, and learned to appreciate my body who has always been my loyal servant to my whims. I learned to push through my discomfort, simply because there was no other choice; as in hiking, you simply have to continue putting one foot in front of the other. I was reminded that my approach to having everything figured out and ascertained is not the only way of navigating the world, and not the best way anyway– it’s just the most comfortable.
Although it was not my easiest week, that week in Huaraz corrected my unrealistic expectation that every week of my sabbatical was going to be a great week. If we could only remember that fortune is dispersed on an ongoing wheel, that the valleys are part of the mountain landscape, we could maybe find peace in all there is to come. Huaraz is one of my favorite stops because it enriched the rest of my experiences in Peru.
Huaraz and solo traveling reminded me that feelings of doubt and discomfort can be precursors to growth. This week showed me that I am capable of my greatest wishes, and bigger than my biggest fears.
I knew that before, but I now believe it
What was a rueful mistake that turned out to be one of your most valuable lessons?
What’s your relationship to challenges? How do you feel about them, how do you handle them?