... but not without my trusty old transistor radio to give me my daily dose of ABC Radio National and, more specifically, Phillip Adams' LATE NIGHT LIVE for my nightcap.
Solo travel has its own particular compensations. Travel with someone else, and you're for ever trying to strike a balance between your passion for Gothic and theirs for modern architecture, your need for sleep against their hunger for just one more night out, your liking for walking in strange streets against their conviction that it's wiser to take a taxi or a bus.
There's even more to it than that. Travelling with your nearest and dearest insulates you from the places you're in. You have someone to talk to, you have a bit of your familiar world with you all the time. That cuts you off from the very strangeness you've travelled thousands of miles to see. Alone, you get into conversation with all sorts of people in all sorts of places. You can team up with newly-made acquaintances when you want to do the same things, go your own way without hurting anyone's feelings when that's what suits your inclination.
There's plenty of the all-too-familiar to be found back where you'll be going all too soon. It seems a waste of your time and your fare to surround yourself with home-town atmosphere while you're away.
