Living through 18 to 30 is a ride — exciting, big, rewarding, disheartening, breaking — all of it. Sometimes all at once. Nothing is settled, nothing is certain. Yet, everything is a possibility. Everything is an opportunity.
This decade deserves travel milestones that aren't about destinations or countries to "check" off your list. These are experiences that change how you move, question, stop, gaze at, and push through the rest of the world.
A solo-trip somewhere English-speaking. (If that’s your first language).
If you’ve never traveled abroad alone, start with a place where they speak your language. Where the cultural norm is to welcome you with open arms, ask how you’re doing and by the end, you’ve have a new friend.
Start with England, Scotland or Ireland. (Personal preference for Ireland).
The people will make you feel like they’re your distant cousin before your bags hit the floor. The pub will adopt you. The music will invite you in. Someone might even jokingly ask to marry you to get to America.
Being solo, it’s hard to feel alone when you’re surrounded by that much joy, wonder, and friendly strangers buying you a pint.
This isn’t a trip that will push you to your limits. This trip is about proving to yourself you can do it – you can navigate a new place, a foreign currency, a different culture, make new friends, eat dinner alone, make your own plans without anyone else attached – and actually enjoy all of it.
A trip to a country that’s nothing like home.
Go somewhere far. Somewhere the food is different, the language is new, the pace is faster or slower, and the priorities are not the same. Somewhere that makes you realize how small your frame of reference has been.
This is the trip that loosens your grip on the way you were taught things “should be done.” You’ll eat differently. You’ll greet people differently. You’ll watch people live their lives with different rhythms and realize there’s no right way to do any of it – just the way you’re used to.
You’ll return home grateful for the things you never thought about before. And bothered by things you used to accept without question.
A trip that goes completely wrong.
You’ll miss a flight. You’ll lose a bag. You’ll get sick in a country where the pharmacy has off hours and closed days that’s different than your local CVS or Walgreens. You’ll be alone in it – and you’ll figure it out.
This isn’t a milestone you can plan for. It just happens. Honestly, it’s a milestone you don’t really want – which is sort of the point.
And when it does happen, you learn something about yourself that no smooth trip could ever teach you: you’re resourceful, you can sit in discomfort without falling apart, panic has a shelf life and eventually you just have to start solving the problem.
For me, one of my early moments was when I had contracted staph infection in Vietnam at 18; I had no idea what staph was or what it looked like. I thought it was a brown recluse spider bite. By the will of the universe, I met a retired French doctor looking out to the sunset across Ha Long Bay. We struck up a very normal conversation about what got us both sitting on the dock and landed on how he studied at Berkley for medicine. I took advantage of this universe-conspiring-to-help-me moment and asked about all these odd marks on my arms. He said “Staph” and wrote me a prescription. I picked it up at the pharmacy. I still think about him to this day.
Go back to a place that changed you.
This is your return trip. You’ve been thinking about this one spot for years. Maybe it’s your hometown. Maybe it was a pitstop during a roadtrip. Maybe it was your college town; or the city that held rent of your first apartment. This place is either sacred or dreary.
You go back and both of you have changed.
The street you went to elementary school on is actually much shorter and smaller than you remembered. The coffee shop closed. A new brewery just opened. A yoga studio took over your beloved library.
You’re starting to notice growth around your old roots. This trip teaches you that a place isn’t frozen in the version of you that experienced all that time ago. It keeps going. And so do you.
Say yes to spontaneity.
Someone in the hostel common room says they’re going to the pub down the street with an open invite. A stranger at the cafe recommends a neighborhood you haven’t explored yet and offers to walk you there.
Say yes.
Some of my most poignant memories came from something completely off any plan I made. The opportunities showed up because I was open to it – sitting at the communal table, saying yes to the pub, following someone’s recommendation.
You won’t keep in touch with everyone you meet. That’s okay.
Some of them will stay. And the memory of saying yes, being that open – trusting and willing – will remind you of who you are and what you can do when you just say yes.
Go somewhere. Go alone. Go back. Let it fall apart. Say yes.
Raye 💌
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