100 Solo Travel Quotes & Viral Instagram Captions
Catchy captions that are 125-150 characters in length get more likes and comments on Instagram.
Using these rules, I’ve put together a list of 100 quotes about traveling alone that will have your solo travel Instagram posts popping off!
After something funny, feminine, or inspirational? Maybe it’s your first time traveling alone? This list includes solo travel quotes for every situation!
100 Solo Travel Quotes and Instagram Captions
The 10 Best Traveling Alone Quotes
I read through 100s and 1000s of solo travel quotes, phrases and saying whilst putting together this list. Out of all of them, I think these are the 10 best quotes about traveling alone.
Not only do these quotes capture how important it is to travel alone – they are short and sweet (perfect for Instagram)!
“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.”
Henry David Thoreau (Naturalist and philosopher)
“I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.”
Thomas Jefferson (President of the US)
“He travels the fastest who travels alone.”
Rudyard Kipling (Author)
“Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone.”
Buddha (Religious Teacher)
“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself”
Haruki Murakami (Author)
“I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.”
Daphne du Maurier (Author)
“When the traveler goes alone he gets acquainted by himself.”
Liberty Hyde Bailey (Horticulturist)
“Life on the open road is the essence of freedom.”
Isabelle Eberhardt (Explorer and author)
“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
G.K. Chesterton (Writer)
“To travel happily, you must travel light. And to travel light, you must travel alone.”
Nomadic Yak
Solo Female Travel Quotes
There have been many amazing female explorers and travel writers throughout history. But only a few have left memorable quotes about traveling alone as a woman.
These solo female travel quotes are both fun and inspiring – perfect for creating powerful Instagram captions!
“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”
Mae West (Actress)
“Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling.”
Roman Payne (Novelist and poet)
“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.”
Eda LeShan (Author)
“An adventure may be worn as a muddy spot or it may be worn as a proud insignia. It is the woman wearing it who makes it the one thing or the other.”
Norma Shearer (Actress)
“I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Author of Eat, Pray, Love)
“Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.”
Barbara De Angelis (Relationship Consultant)
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Author of Eat, Pray, Love)
“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
Cheryl Strayed (Author of Wild)
“It isn’t the details of my travels that intrigue them; it’s the fact that I am living a rich, fulfilling life. And I’m doing it without a man.”
Rita Gelman (Author of Tales of a Female Nomad)
“A girl who travels has relationships that are based not on security, but on sincerity”
Lauren Klarfeld (Travel Writer)
Funny Solo Travel Quotes
Traveling alone isn’t always adventure and excitement – there are also a lot of laughs along the way. Use these funny solo travel quotes to caption the humorous moments on your solo trip!
“Drink heavily with the locals whenever possible.”
Anthony Bourdain (Celebrity chef and travel documentarian)
“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
Mark Twain (Author)
“He was free and unencumbered. Which is to say alone and unemployed.”
Tim Winton (Author)
“Keep good company – that is, go to the Louvre.”
Paul Cezanne (French Artist)
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
David Mitchell (Author)
“It’s a long ride home with nothing but me for company. I bore myself sometimes. Not often. Just now and again.”
A.J. Hartley (Author)
“I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on earth. Then I ask myself the same question.”
Harun Yahya (Religious Cult Leader)
The tan will fade and the dirt will wash away, but the memories will last forever
Unknown
An adventure each day keeps the doctor away
Unknown
“Everyone’s out here getting married. I can’t even find a travel partner!”
Unknown
First Solo Trip Quotes
Nervous about traveling alone for the first time? Excited to hit the road and experience independence?
Calm your nerves and get inspired with these quotes about your first solo trip!
“Live your life by a compass, not a clock”
Erica Jong (Author)
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Lao Tzu (Philosopher)
“Adventure should be part of everyone’s life. It is the whole difference between being fully alive and just existing.”
Holly Morris (Filmmaker)
“There are better things ahead than any we leave behind”
C.S. Lewis (Author)
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain (Author)
“You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it’s too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it.”
Jhumpa Lahiri (Author)
“Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life”
Michael Palin (Actor)
“Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”
David McCullough Jr (English Teacher)
“A ship is safe in the harbour, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
John A. Shedd (Author)
“The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.”
Anna Quindlen (Author)
“Although you travel alone, you’re rarely ever lonely. Your companions are like-minded travelers seeking the same things as you”
Nomadic Yak
Solo Road Trip Quotes
Taking a long drive on your lonesome? Snapped all the sights, streets and sunsets with a camera?
Caption all those Instagram posts with these solo road trip quotes!
“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to take.”
Angela Blount (Author)
“Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.”
Elisabeth Berg (Author)
“It’s not getting from A to B. It’s not the beginning or the destination that counts. It’s the ride in between.”
David Baldacci (Novelist)
“All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.”
Jack Kerouac (Author)
“Just me, the road and my ride”
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Quotes About Wanting to Travel Alone
Dreaming of taking a solo trip around the world? Maybe climbing Machu Picchu? Diving the Great Barrier Reef? Taking a safari in Africa? Road-tripping across the USA?
These quotes are for anyone saying ‘I want to travel alone’!
“There are some places in life where you can only go alone. Embrace the beauty of your solo journey.”
Mandy Hale (Author)
“Solo travel is an investment in yourself.”
Unknown
“If you have to wait for someone to travel with you, you may end up waiting a lifetime!”
Unknown
“Not I, nor anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.”
Walt Whitman (Poet)
“To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Journalist)
“Don’t put off your adventures while you wait for available friends to join.”
Francis Shenstone (Travel Author)
“In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”
Haruki Murakami (Author)
“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Author)
“Your path is yours alone. And if it’s the path less traveled, that’s absolutely fine. The world doesn’t need more conformists. The world needs more people who create and question and search.”
Laird Hamilton (Surfer)
“Some journeys can be only travelled alone!”
Ken Poirot (Author)
Quotes About the Experience of Travelling Alone
These quotes let you know what it feels like when you travel alone. Because it can be tricky trying to express the experience of travelling alone!
“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”
John Muir (Mountaineer)
“Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”
Neil Gaiman (Author)
“I will never be content with a sedentary life. I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.”
Isabelle Eberhardt (Author)
“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”
Pascal Mercier (Author)
“Because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars…”
Jack Kerouac (Author)
“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, To gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote, To travel is to live.”
Hans Christian Andersen (Author)
“The tourist experience is superficial and glancing. The traveler develops a deeper connection with her surroundings. She stays longer, makes her own plans, chooses her own destination, and usually travels alone: solo travel and solo participation, although the most difficult emotionally, seem the most likely to produce a good story.”
Ted Conover (Author)
“There’s something about arriving in new cities, wandering empty streets with no destination. I will never lose the love for the arriving, but I’m born to leave.”
Charlotte Eriksson (Author)
“I am seated here. Alone. A thousand miles away from everybody. But if I have myself and my sanity, I’ve got nothing else to lose.”
Michael Bassey Johnson (Author)
“It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancholies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.”
Gustave Flaubert (Author)
“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”
George Augustus Moore (Author and poet)
Quotes About Loving to Travel Alone
Want to show the world how much you love to travel alone? Here are the best quotes about enjoying solo trips!
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world.”
Freya Stark (Explorer and travel writer)
“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”
Henry Rollins (Singer)
“I like being alone when there’s no one around. It’s a nice freedom to be the only one there, humming and coping, following my impulse”
Jill Frayne (Author)
“My spirit gets nourished in faraway places. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a biological need, perhaps a biological flaw, that compels me to seek the excitement and challenge that comes of being in a place where nobody knows me.”
Rita Golden Gelman (Travel writer)
“When you’re (traveling) with someone else, you share each discovery, but when you are alone, you have to carry each experience with you like a secret, something you have to write on your heart, because there’s no other way to preserve it.”
Shauna Niequist (Author)
“I am never happier than when I am alone in a foreign city; it is as if I had become invisible.”
Storm Jameson (Journalist)
“If companionship is a mandate for all of our experiences, then we will miss out on many of life’s blessings.”
Gina Greenlee (Travel Author)
“A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places.”
Isabelle Eberhardt (Explorer and author)
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
J.R.R Tolkien (Author)
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
St. Augustine (Saint)
“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”
Lao Tzu (Philosopher)
Inspirational Quotes About Traveling Alone
First-time solo travelers have all sorts of worries about traveling alone. Is it weird to travel alone? Is traveling alone boring? Is solo travel sad and lonely?
Let’s get you motivated! Here are the 10 most inspirational quotes for traveling alone!
“The inner journey of travel is intensified by solitude.”
Paul Theroux (Travel Writer)
“A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.”
Roman Payne (Novelist and poet)
“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.”
Wendell Berry (Novelist and poet)
“The steward just asked me if I was not afraid to travel alone, and I said, “Why, it is life.”
Emily Hahn (Journalist)
“And in fleeing thousands of miles across the Pacific, I chose myself, and a chance at a different future”
Alison Singh Gee (Journalist)
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
Helen Keller (Author)
“Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it.”
John Mayer (Musician)
“Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.”
John Muir (Mountaineer)
“I would not suffer anyone to endure the path I walk. My road must always be traveled alone.”
Julie Kagawa (Author)
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver (Poet)
Quotes About Traveling Solo to Find Yourself
There are many advantages to solo travel. However, one of the biggest benefits of traveling alone is discovering who you really are and what you’re truly capable of.
If you want to do some self-reflecting, here are the 10 best quotes about traveling solo to find yourself.
“You travel alone to lose your ways and find yourself.”
Nomadic Yak
“It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others”
Alain de Botton (Author)
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s OK. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
Anthony Bourdain (Celebrity chef and travel documentarian)
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
Gustave Flaubert (Author)
“As we go through life, we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover the more we lose ourselves.”
Haruki Murakami (Author)
“Traveling alone makes you vulnerable to being moved by things.”
Marlowe Granados (Author)
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves.”
Pico Iyer (Essayist)
“Traveling alone, you get to be whoever you want. I don’t mean lie. I mean you get to be a blank slate. You can’t leave behind your skin color, or your height, or the handsomeness or homeliness of your face. But you can leave your story behind.”
Jedidiah Jenkins (Travel Writer)
“I have traveled many roads in my life. Some were imbued with pain and I needed to avert my gaze. Others were so beautiful that I would have remained there forever. But always, at some point in these routes, I reached a place where I encountered myself.”
Pablo Holmberg (Artist)
“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.”
Paulo Coelho (Lyricist)
“Becoming free is learning about yourself; the scared and the insecure, the brilliant and the bold. Embrace both and the journey is yours and yours alone. No longer are you following another’s directions and your path and purpose will present themselves.”
Riitta Klint (Artist)
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
Terry Pratchett (Author)
Where to Find More Solo Trip Quotes
You’re now armed with 100 quotes about traveling alone that you can use as solo travel Instagram captions. But what if you want even more?
Goodreads is one of the best resources for finding quotes about traveling alone. Simply use the search function to search for solo travel quotes from your favorite authors.
You could also be a bit cheeky and use captions and quotes that other Instagrammers have already used on their solo trips. Search on Instagram for hashtags such as #solotravel or #travelalone to find popular, funny and inspirational solo trip quotes.
4 Solo Travel Social Media Tips
Using solo travel Instagram captions will help you to get more likes and comments on your posts. However, here are some extra social media tips to boost your engagement even more!
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Use solo travel hashtags
When you include a hashtag in your solo travel Instagram captions or stories, your post will appear when users search for that hashtag. This can help you reach an audience that is interested in your solo travel content.
When posting photos and stories of your solo trip, be sure to use popular solo travel hashtags such as #travelalone #solotravel #backpacker #wanderlust or #adventure.
Tag your location
Instagram posts with a tagged location get 79% more engagement than posts without a tagged location.
So wherever you are on your solo trip, tag your location before writing a caption with one of the solo travel quotes above.
Caption length
According to a study by Hootsuite, longer Instagram captions (90-130 words) tend to get more likes and comments than shorter captions (2-10 words).
However, Influencer Marketing Hub suggests that because Instagram is a visual medium, you should try to limit your captions to 125-150 characters.
If some of the above quotes about traveling alone seem too long for your Instagram posts, you may want to cut them down to just a sentence or two. Or put a twist on a quote to make it your own.
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Find More Solo Travel Tips on Nomadic Yak
Nomadic Yak helps solo travellers to plan journeys that are adventurous and authentic.
Every article is written by me, Harry Dale. I’ve travelled to 40+ countries over the last 5 years – all alone.
I’ve shared everything you need if you’re planning to solo travel for the first time.
You’ll also find 100s of solo travel tips on how to save money, make more friends, build a social media following and much more.
Plus, you can use my solo travel destination guides to discover international sights and attractions that few other travellers get to witness.
