This is why they call it “lonely planet”

I’ve never tried to write while staying up all night in order to defeat jet lag before it hits. It should not be difficult to keep oneself awake in Sydney, which is Australia’s version of the city that never sleeps. But the only prospect more difficult than to sleep in the city that never sleeps is to be (more or less) alone in the city that never sleeps.

This trip to Australia, despite the considerable time spent seeing the tourist attractions and exploring the undersides of Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, has been purposed for research on the similarities and differences between diabetes care models in the United States and those in Australia. Interviews with dozens of people from many organizations across this country have lent tremendous insight on the structure of public health and patient journeys here. Now my goal is to understand how such constructions might fit within the United States’ healthcare system. This destination wasn’t chosen for social reasons: Australia does a much better job of managing diabetes than the United States does.

That said, solo travel offers unique opportunities to meet new people: you are free to go where you choose, go when you wish, stay as long as you like, and speak with whomever you please. With the comforting knowledge that defined social relationships are waiting for you back home and at school, interactions while traveling abroad feel quite freeing in their fleeting nature.

There was the surreal experience at the rather nice Italian restaurant after watching my first Australian Rules Football game at Melbourne Cricket Ground. While groups of adults around the room ate, drank, talked and were merry, I sat alone at a corner table. This couple sat down at the adjacent table near the end of dinner and we struck up conversation. They were fans of the Hawthorne Hawks (who’d just thrashed the Melbourne Demons) and as the conversation went along it turned out that they knew a prominent figure in Australia’s private health insurance industry. After an introduction, two days later I had one of the more useful and interesting conversations of the entire trip. The universe can indeed be kind.

There was the grizzled local on the train to Liverpool, a suburb to the southwest of Sydney, who advised me to dive into the culture headfirst and read old poetry, listen to aboriginal music, see alternative art galleries and visit the less-famous villages in the Blue Mountains. That interaction, which opened a world of alternative experiences, felt like meeting with a wizened old wizard while wandering in the woods of tourism and itineraries.

There was the friendship that developed with my Airbnb hosts in Canberra who have children in Melbourne. They implored me to attend their daughter-in-law’s concert at the Drunken Poet – an old Irish pub that serves delicious draughts – and stop by their son’s brand new bar Trumpy in a northern suburb, a journey that waited until the last night in Melbourne before being taken. It was quite worth the haul for the lively conversation and strange fellowship-through-association.

There was the French niece of my Airbnb hosts in Melbourne who accompanied me to the jazz concert at the world-famous Bennetts Lane Jazz Club – not easy to find being at the end of a dark alley off another slightly less-dark alley off a side street. Expecting some sort of classic jazz performance, we were surprised with an offbeat and discordant ensemble of strange sound effects and deafening crescendos. We agreed that something so new and different was worthwhile and helpful for the mind.

There was the one-man show at an independent theater – its location in the back of a small pub off a side street on the edge of a lonely Sydney suburb made me rather skeptical at first – which turned out to be beautiful contemplation on apathy and memory. I’ll never forget the experience of having drinks for some time after the show with the performer, his director, and some friends who had come down from Queensland. Recalling how I first walked away for two blocks, then returned to the pub and struck up conversation with the unfamiliar group, reinforces the importance of taking uncomfortable risks.

Looking back on these three weeks, being “alone” has given me some of the greatest variety of experience one could imagine. Even the inevitable stretches of solitude – riding early morning trains to far flung destinations, or waiting for the tram on a crowded city street where nobody seems open to conversation – provide their own source of pleasure. There is value in being comfortable with your own thoughts and feeling alright in the absence of constant distraction.

The consistent line throughout these travels, the justification for investing in experiences at the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Tower Buffet, the Eureka Skydeck in Melbourne and other pursuits that might seem wasteful to experience alone, has been that this is not merely a “scouting trip” for future travel in Australia. This world is big and wonderful – full of interesting people and places – and travelers should not take travel to one place for granted. When in Rome, do as the (tourists of) Romans do!

The clock is now crossing 3:30am – not an unusual time for college students to be awake. Sometimes there is an advantage in having an inconsistent sleep schedule – situations like these would be simple for most of my friends. But for somebody who does the “early to bed and early to rise” routine during the weekdays, it’s a tour de misery.

Physical conditions, however, are temporary and meaningless. The impact of this trip, my first solo journey in a foreign land, will extend far into the coming years. Although I can’t imagine that anyone has read this far on this post, under the slight possibility that you have, take this advice: identify the place(s) where you wish to travel alone and just go there. It will be worth the time and effort in more ways than one can comprehend.