Solo travel
India on your own account, and rarely travelling alone
A country this size can feel like a large undertaking to face by yourself. A small group of people doing the same trip, none of them a stranger by the second day, makes the case for going anyway.
By Arthur Penhallow26 September 20264 min read
India rewards curiosity and punishes hesitation, which is an awkward combination for a traveller weighing up whether to see it alone. The distances are considerable, the languages and scripts change from state to state, and the practicalities, arranging a driver here, negotiating a fair fare there, working out which train platform actually corresponds to the ticket, are the sort of thing that takes a confident local traveller in their stride and a first-time visitor rather longer to learn. None of this makes India unsuited to independent travel. It does make a strong case for a trip designed specifically for people travelling on their own, where those logistics are somebody else's job and the company at dinner is not left to chance.
There is also a simpler, less practical reason worth admitting. India tends to be experienced through conversation as much as through sightseeing, whether that is haggling over a fair price in a market, being invited to a chai stall by someone curious about where you have come from, or comparing notes with a fellow traveller on the day's temple against yesterday's fort. A trip built for solo travellers does not manufacture those exchanges, but it does guarantee a table of people willing to have them each evening, which matters more here than it might on a quieter itinerary elsewhere.
What "solo" actually means on these trips
Operators that build tours exclusively for solo travellers, rather than simply waiving the single supplement on a trip designed for couples, tend to structure the days differently: shared tables rather than assigned twos, itineraries with enough flexibility for people to peel off and explore alone when they want to, and a group small enough that faces become familiar within the first couple of days rather than remaining a blur of fellow tourists for the whole trip. It is a particular kind of company, people who have chosen to travel this way rather than ended up doing so by circumstance, and it tends to produce a friendlier trip than the phrase "solo travel" suggests on its own.
The parts of India that suit this best
The north Indian circuit, Delhi, Jaipur, Ranthambore, Agra, and often Varanasi and Amritsar besides, works well for a first solo trip because the ground covered is well established, the logistics between cities are handled by the tour rather than left to improvisation, and the range of experience on offer, Mughal architecture, a tiger reserve, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, is broad enough to reward a group of strangers with genuinely different interests. Kerala offers a gentler, greener alternative for the same reasons: shorter distances, a slower pace built around hill stations and backwaters, and a similarly wide spread of things to notice along the way. Both circuits also share a practical virtue for a first solo trip: they are among the most heavily travelled routes in the country, which means hotels, guides and drivers are thoroughly accustomed to visiting groups, and the inevitable small mishaps of independent-minded travel, a missed connection, a change of plan, are considerably easier to absorb than they would be somewhere more remote.
The company at these trips is a particular kind: people who have chosen to travel this way rather than ended up doing so by circumstance.
Varanasi, and travelling well rather than travelling fast
Several of these itineraries include Varanasi, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and a major centre of Hindu pilgrimage on the banks of the Ganges, where the ghats, the stepped banks leading down to the river, are used daily for bathing, prayer and cremation rites that have continued largely unchanged for centuries. It is not an easy place to process alone on a first visit, and it is exactly the kind of place where a guide's context and a companion's presence both earn their keep.
When to go
The same seasonal logic applies here as across most of northern and southern India: October to March avoids both the pre-monsoon heat and the monsoon itself, and gives a solo group comfortable conditions for the long days of sightseeing these itineraries generally involve. It is worth booking early for this window, since it is the season everyone, solo travellers and families alike, tends to choose.
By Arthur Penhallow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
