The thing about long-term travel – especially solo – is that plans start to look a lot less like an itinerary and a whole lot more like a dart board with an ever changing map.

When you’re traveling long term, you can only plan so far in advance. How far in advance that is depends on you. It can be 3 days or it could be 3 weeks or even 3 months. Everyone is different and how you travel is going to reflect that.

Some people prefer to have structure in their day to day. Others don’t know what they’re doing until they wake up. And still others are in between.

One thing that I’ve found as I’ve traveled, is almost everyone leaves at least something up in the air to be able to do what feels right. Even those that plan 3 months in advance, it’s typically accommodation not activities. Planning activities in advance is for super busy attractions and holidays/vacations – long term travel is not a vacation.

So how do you travel without a plan?

Easy – you just go. I decided to go to Albania when I heard good things about it from people I had met. I decided to go to Australia less than a week before I booked my flight.

Okay. So I say it’s easy, but it can be a bit nerve wracking at times to be without a plan. To know that you only have x days booked somewhere and have to figure out where you’re going after that. For all that there is no plan, there’s a lot of planning that is involved with solo traveling without a plan.

The Risk

One of the biggest risks that come with traveling without a plan, is the risk that you’re going to get stagnant. When you don’t have an end date, something that you have to be somewhere for, it can be really easy to just fall into the groove of life where you are. That’s what happened to me in Albania.

That’s not a bad thing! Slow travel is a thing for a reason, it allows you time to settle. It lets you meet new people, make connections, see more of a place than just the surface, and experience more of the culture.

But it can also make it so that you don’t move on. And maybe you decide you don’t want to move on and instead want to strive to make a life wherever you are long term, maybe even permanently. But if you do want to move on, it can be hard sometimes to find that motivation if you don’t already have a plan.

The Reward

But as with most risks, there is a reward. The reward of having no plan is that you can decide where speaks to you and where doesn’t.

When let downs happen during a trip with no plan, you can pivot. It’s not restricted to only the let downs either. During this trip, I typically book accommodation for about a week at a time. If I love a location, I extend. Sometimes that does mean that I have to change accommodations, but mostly I can extend where I currently am. It also means that when I hear about a new place, or am given an opportunity to do something, I can without fear of losing money.

If I hear about a waterfall, I can go. If I’m invited to join someone headed to Budapest, I can join them. If I decide that wherever I am isn’t a good fit, I can leave.

The Reality

When you have everything scheduled, there’s no room to ‘mess up’ or to change your mind. What you plan in those cases is what you get, and it can be incredibly difficult to admit to yourself that you should have done something different.

I’ve seen it before. Sometimes a place is so built up in your head, that it can’t possibly live up to expectations. I saw it when I moved to London. I knew someone who loved the BBC and British history, and so much more. After a few weeks, she ended up admitting that she was a bit let down with London and England in general. She thought that she would feel at home and feel like she belonged. She thought that she would find a community and maybe even end up moving there long term. She had certain expectations that actually weren’t realistic and were based more on what she saw on TV or read about than how her experience would actually be. I don’t know if she ended up making more than 1 or 2 non-American/Canadian friends there.

I’ve also experienced it. That moment when you realize that you want to change your plan. That moment that you convince yourself that the plan you made is the right one – no matter how the trip is making you feel. There’s an ownership of a plan, whether it is only for yourself or it’s one made for by or for others, that makes it difficult to admit that the plan isn’t working for you. Throw in anything that’s pre-paid and you’re now you’re doubly locked in refusing to admit that the plan wasn’t what you actually needed/wanted. It’s a shitty feeling, especially when there are aspects that you can no longer change for whatever reason.

The Limitations

Now, there are some limitations to the freedom of no plans. External limitations that are typically possible to overcome, though at a price (sometimes literally).

The main limitation? When you’re country hopping it’s visas and their requirements. For instance – New Zealand. In order to enter New Zealand on a tourist/visitors visa, you have to have a departure flight confirmed. This means you have to decide when you’re going to leave before you even get there. Now you can technically still change your mind and leave earlier or later, but that’s going to cost you money to change the flight – whether that be a flight change fee or having already spent more for a flexible fare. I’m seeing that in NZ myself. I have a friend that is in Oceania right now, she invited me to join her – and I would’ve loved to – but it would have to be after I leave NZ because the price to change my flight to get to Fiji is more than I currently want to spend.

There are also visas in general. Many countries require them or at least require that you give a heads up you’re heading there – though thankfully many countries that require advance visas have switched to eVisas rather than having to send your passport in for a physical one. These cost money. If you make your decision to go there too last minute, you may have to pay to have your application expedited. The price that comes from visas is also the time it takes. You can’t always make the decision to go to a place the day before – sometimes you’ll need a couple days, a week, or maybe longer depending on the processing time for the visa. Sure – you could get a flight or a train ticket to the place, but if you don’t have the visa you might not get in.

But how do I decide?

That all depends on you. For me, I talk to the people around me and ask what places they like to explore. Sometimes there are places that I want to visit that have been in a movie or a book that I want to see what it’s like. Sometimes I look at the locations that are on the bus route and pick a place at random. Sometimes I jump on a bus/train and go until I see something that I want to see more of. Sometimes I decide based on what accommodation I can find in an area.

For some the goal is to go off the beaten path. For some the goal is certain creature comforts. Whatever the reason that you decide to go someplace, it’s your choice to make when you’re solo traveling. And that can be both freeing and filled with stress.

Is it worth it?

To me it is. I love getting to decide where I want to go based on just me. That freedom to go with the flow has gotten me away from places that feel stifling and has allowed me to stay longer in places I loved. It can be annoying to have to regularly make plans for what’s next rather than dedicate time to build a long term plan where you then don’t have to think while you’re gone. It can even be annoying to wake up and not have anything on the agenda and not know what you want to do. But the freedom that comes from it? The freedom to just be me? More than worth it.