Your travel partner

The person who travels with you, if someone travels with you, makes all the difference. Choose wisely or go it alone.

Travel reveals who you are and gives you the opportunity to learn, if you decide to learn. It's not going to change you from an annoying person to a marvelous person. It's not going to make you something you don't already have the potential to be. But if you have even a smidgeon of curiosity or humility, travel has the potential to improve you in deep and meaningful ways.

What's the big variable here?

Your travel partner, or your confidence to try solo travel just once (I've traveled alone, with a family and with just one other person - they're all good and I've always felt safe).

You want a travel partner you can spend time with, because you will spend a lot of time with that person. When my husband and I travel, we're together 24/7 for two to three weeks. Given the COVID-19 trauma, when we were together almost every minute of 17 months, that seems ridiculously easy. But still.

Specifically, you want someone who wakes up and goes to bed at roughly the same time you do. You want someone with roughly the same amount of energy that you have. You want someone who has roughly the same interests, and that extends to things like fancy or simple restaurants, bare-bones or luxurious accommodations, a slow pace or a "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity so I need to see everything" mindset.

I'm fortunate that my husband, who travels with me, is well suited to my weirdness. He's like me in most ways and tolerates our differences in the ways we're not alike. We're both morning people; we both like the outdoors; and we both enjoy slow travel. I'm probably bolder than he is, but he has few expectations and doesn't mind that.

I like the thoughts Geoff Maxwell had on this. After traveling to "all the [train] stations" in the United Kingdom, he said, "Only travel with someone you love."

If you think a big trip is going to rescue a marginal relationship, you're wrong; it won't. If you think it's going to stress a good relationship, you're right; it will, but probably in a good way.

We've settled into a reliable routine of me picking out where we travel and taking care of the arrangements; he goes along with just about anything I suggest. I do the writing and he does the photography. I do the videos but can use any of his still shots without asking. It works.