Great holidays for solo travellers

Solo travel. It has an adventurous ring to it. It’s a chance to set out on your own to explore more of the world – a personal odyssey, a journey where you find out more about the delights of the planet without being slowed down by friends or family who may have other priorities. It’s all about seeing what you want, when you want. Maybe you’re young, maybe you’re old. The point is you want to get out there and try new experiences.

Our Telegraph reader survey on solo travel, which was published this week at the Travel Convention held by Abta – The Travel Association, suggests that this scenario resonates with many of you. Overall, some 68 per cent saw it as a chance to see the world on their own terms. In fact, more readers actually chose to travel alone than were forced to do so because they don’t have a partner. And the numbers are growing.

But to some, setting out on their own, with no one to talk to, or help make plans, can seem a bit daunting. There will be no one with whom to enjoy that sense of a common purpose, no one to take that photograph of you in front of the Taj Mahal, no one to share memories with afterwards. Indeed, concern that they might feel isolated on a trip, or suffer from some sort of social stigma affected about 20 per cent of readers, while a relatively small number, some 10 per cent, are so put off by the prospect that they say it completely puts them off solo travelling altogether.

Slightly more than this however – 12 per cent – took the opposite tack. They cited the chance to meet other like-minded people as the single most important reason that they set out alone in the first place. For solo travel often – almost paradoxically – means travelling in a crowd: on a group tour, on a cruise, or an escorted trip where the common strand is that you are travelling with like-minded strangers. It is, in many ways, the exact reverse of travelling alone.

Of course, at one end of the spectrum the solo traveller is just that. Someone who plans and executes their holiday happily on their own, perhaps with the help of a tour operator, or simply creating an itinerary via the internet. For many younger travellers it is a way of life. They are content to wash up in places, meeting people by chance or through social media. Sometimes they will be alone; sometimes with other people; it is all part of the adventure.

Perhaps you are a rather more reluctant solo traveller – you’d like to be with someone else, but circumstances are against you, because you are a widow or widower, single or separated. You could just as easily be married to someone who prefers a golfing holiday to the long-distance cycling trip you’ve always longed to do. Or perhaps you’ve been waiting your whole life to make a trip of a lifetime – to Machu Picchu or Kilimanjaro – and you’ve realised that you can’t wait for the other people in your life to catch up and share that dream.

Take heart. There are many ways of making things easier in terms of travel arrangements – from escorted tours, to cruises, to activity and adventure holidays; trips where your solo travel status is an asset rather than a hindrance and which can offer the assurance that you will never feel isolated or alone. To help you on your way, we’ve picked out a selection of 50 group tours and holidays which will have particular appeal to those who choose to travel solo.

Going it alone has never been so popular – perhaps you should give it a try, says Ben Ross