A person in Lhasa, traveled to various temples, basked in the sun at the entrance of Jokhang Temple, and watched monks debate scriptures at Sera Temple.
In Tibet, I chartered a bus to Linzhi in youth travel, climbed the mountain pass at an altitude of 5000+ and saw the snow-capped mountains.
In Gansu, carpool to the back of Mingsha Mountain, camp in the desert and watch the sunset.
I stayed alone in Shuanglang and a youth hostel for many days, watching the sunrise and sunset in Erhai Lake every day.
Alone in Dali, I joined the Erhai team in a youth brigade, taking everyone around the lake and taking pictures.
In Lugu Lake, I rented an electric car to take my sister I met in Dali around the lake and worked as a private photographer for two days.
Sitting alone on Weizhou Island, almost covered with a beach, watching the sunset.
A person went to Sanqingshan and took the cold hiking route of 10. The whole journey up and down the mountain was 10 hour, with no food and almost no rest.
I went to Ningxia alone and waited quietly for the sun to set in front of the empty Xixia mausoleum.
Go to Macau alone and walk into the Venetian casino. At that time, students didn't have any money, but they just lost hundreds of dollars on slot machines. Fortunately, they finally won a sum of money and barely recovered it.
After visiting Hong Kong with friends, I went to Stanley, Lamma Island and Repulse Bay at the southern tip of Hong Kong Island to experience different Hong Kong customs.
When I went to Datong alone, the black car driver said I could get a discount ticket. As a result, he gave me a disability certificate, and I swaggered through the ticket gate with the disability certificate and went to the Aviation Temple and Hengshan Mountain.
A person has traveled all over most ancient towns in China, such as Nanxun in Tongli, Zhouzhuang in Wuzhen in the south of the Yangtze River, Xidi in Hongcun in Huizhou, Fenghuang in Xiangxi, Huangyao in Guangxi, Shuhe Xizhou in Dali, Lijiang in Yunnan and Langzhong in Pingyao in the north.
A person has been to Beijing three times, each time for a job interview. After resigning last year, I went to Beijing for the third time, looking for a job while playing alone, and stayed in a youth hostel for a month and a half.
Countless times, I traveled alone and stayed in youth travel. In the evening, people I meet by chance get together to play games. They get together and go their separate ways a few days later. This is fate.
So, what is the experience of traveling alone? Free and unrestrained, you can stay in one place as long as you want. When you have enough time, choose a place where you can play slowly, stay in a youth hostel for ten days and a half, and do nothing but play and kill time slowly.
Most people travel together, but not many people travel alone. Except in some youth hostels, few people travel to scenic spots and other places alone. However, I like to travel alone. To put it mildly, traveling alone can be more completely integrated into the whole journey and destination. When traveling alone, the whole trip is under my control, and I have the greatest freedom to go where I want to go, regardless of the itinerary, the length of time, the accommodation and transportation environment, and the preferences of my friends.
Many friends who have traveled will agree that traveling companions are a very key factor, and good friends are not necessarily good traveling companions. After all, you don't necessarily have friends who like to surf outside often or spend time traveling long distances. When a few friends go to play together, it is inevitable that everyone's hobbies are different. I like staying in youth travel, you like staying in hotels, I like visiting four scenic spots in one day, and you like eating all the delicious food in one day. I want to take a week off, so you can only go during the small holiday. You may be subject to various restrictions.
Even if you have the same interests as your friends, it is not easy to find time to play with you. Not bad during school. After work, everyone is very busy, especially after a long trip. There is no time to resign or take a long vacation. For example, I resigned twice for various reasons, and it's natural to want to play alone during this period.
In fact, traveling alone does not mean being alone all the time. Making friends on the journey is a very important link. If it is a short trip, it is natural to play alone in the scenic spot and chat with you in places like youth travel. If it's a long-distance trip, the whole trip is planned by myself, and several friends play together at each destination, such as carpooling to one destination, finding someone to cook, chatting and playing games with youth travelers, picking up people on the way and going to the next destination together. A person can join and form a new group at any time, find new friends and meet interesting people, because fate comes together and looks for the next fate respectively. Of course, if there are two people, it is no problem to make friends, but if there are more than three people or couples, they have formed a small group, and it will be more difficult for outsiders to join this existing relationship group.
It must be good to play alone. Is there no disadvantage? Not really, especially for short trips, there is one of the biggest problems: eating. I can solve the travel problem by myself, and go to various scenic spots and non-scenic spots by myself, but when I haven't made friends during short trips and long trips, I can only go to small restaurants silently, but those famous big restaurants can't go. At least I won't go to a big restaurant alone and order a table that I can't eat under the surprised eyes of the service.
Many people don't know how to play when traveling alone for the first time, don't know how to make a strategy, worry about boredom and feel insecure. In fact, it is very easy to play alone. I pretend to be an old driver here and teach some experience.
Poor travel
Poor travel is a controversial topic, which will not be discussed here. In fact, if a person travels, the economic level is generally like a college student, and the requirements for facilities are not high, then poor travel is a good choice. Poor travel here refers to spending less budget to play, and don't think about taking a ride to Tibet for 800 yuan in the online war of words.
These are three schemes for poor travel in China: taking a train, staying in a youth hostel and saving money in other places. Transportation and accommodation are the main parts of travel expenses. If you want to save the budget, you can adopt cheap and acceptable methods in these two links. In terms of transportation, you can choose a hard berth on the train (even if you have a hard seat for the night, at least you don't want to go), and it is not bad to have a discount ticket. Accommodation, bed for youth travel 25-One night in 50 yuan, it is not cost-effective to live alone in a standard big bed room. As for other aspects, in fact, you can't save much money, such as tickets. If you want to save money, you can only evade tickets or apply for a fake student ID card. This is not good, at least you can't advocate this.
Write a rough budget, such as going to Tibet, going to Beishangguang, taking a hard sleeper one-way to 500 yuan by train, and staying in 40 yuan for one night. If you play for 10 days, add up to 1400, plus the bus fare and tickets, regardless of the daily meal fee, a little more than 2,000 is enough. If you fly, the one-way connecting flight costs 1500, and the average hotel stays for one night 120, 10 for 4200 days. Therefore, if you want to travel in poverty, you can save some money on transportation and accommodation, as long as you can accept it.
safe
I've traveled so many times by myself, and I've never encountered any safety problems. As long as I pay attention to myself, the safety of going out alone can be guaranteed, and there will be no safety problems in ordinary trains, youth brigades and carpooling.
As for personal safety, some people are worried about the safety of ethnic minority areas. In fact, the security in those places is usually strict, such as Lhasa, and the safety factor is comparable to that in Beijing. After all, domestic public security ranks first in the world. Like the Lijiang incident, my opinion has little to do with travel. The only safe way to play is not to do things beyond your ability, such as high-intensity hiking. For the sake of property safety, all the rooms of CYTS have lockers, so if you are not too worried, you won't lose anything.
Of course, if women travel alone, they must pay attention to some problems, such as not hitchhiking alone, going to bars alone and so on.
Youth hostel
I wrote so many questions about youth hostels. I think youth travel is the best accommodation choice for a person to travel. Bed rooms are cheap and acceptable, with a good atmosphere, and you can make friends. Generally, there are tourist resources such as chartered cars.
I have introduced the problems and strategies of youth hostels in detail in another article "The most comprehensive youth travel strategy". The following are some summaries: youth travel is divided into international youth travel and small youth travel. Youth travel ≠ Bed 30-50 yuan for one night, emphasizing self-help, with a high safety factor.
About joining a group and carpooling
After a person travels to a destination, there are many ways to choose, such as reporting to a travel agency for a pure tour or traveling alone, finding channels to contact carpooling, chartered cars or activities, and accompanying people on the way. In the process of long-distance travel, find some playmates to play together, play this stop together, and continue to book the same trip at the next stop.
Free travel of travel agencies is a more worry-free way, which can be seen everywhere in the destination. For example, in Lhasa, basically every hotel or guest house can help you get in touch with the free travel to Namco, Yanghu and Linzhi, and the driver will charter a car for 7- 14 people. People of our age generally don't sign up for that kind of tour guide group, so they don't consider it (PS many pure play groups will also take you shopping).
The youth travel mentioned above is a good channel for carpooling and making friends. At ordinary times, many people in the youth brigade come out to play alone. Many youth hostels can help contact chartered drivers. Famous youth hostels also provide their own chartered tours. For example, several youth hostels I went to when I was in Yunnan all had projects organized by youth brigades, such as going around Erhai Lake, climbing Cangshan Mountain, hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge and chartered a car from Lijiang to Lugu Lake. Even if you don't want these, just hook up with some friends in the youth travel service and you can play together.
If you want to find a good playmate before going out, but don't want to join a tour group, you can find someone directly online. For example, forums such as Douban Group and travel websites such as Ant Cell all have posts about finding carpooling and picking up people by car. Hook up if you are interested. But there will be many advertisements for black cars on the internet, so pay attention to identification.
There is another way, called hitchhiking, which is a very miserable way in public opinion. For better or worse, at least for most people and routes, hitchhiking is not an option and need not be considered.
How to play a short trip
It says more about a long trip of more than a week. In reality, everyone is very busy and can only take a short trip to a destination on weekends and long holidays. Short trips don't have so many complicated strategies. Travel planning, carpooling, and finding playmates don't have to be considered. It's quite free and convenient to go alone. After arriving at my destination, I will stay in the Youth Travel Service and invite people to chat at night. I can visit the scenic spots by myself, and I am not afraid of loneliness in a short time.
All-night trains are the most useful means of transportation for short trips. For example, the distance from Beijing to Shanghai, high-speed rail and plane will take half a day. The train time is only about 10 hour, and it will arrive in one night, which does not take up daytime time. The price is cheap, and some all-night trains starting with Z hardly stop halfway. Generally, the train leaves on Friday night, the high-speed train continues on Sunday afternoon or at night, and one place can be played on weekends.
So, what is the experience of traveling alone?
Travel freely, freely arrange the whole itinerary, keep pace with the times, experience the scenery, culture, customs and customs of the destination in depth, and meet a group of interesting traveling companions by accident. When you are used to traveling alone, you won't feel lonely, just enjoy it.