Asia Solo Travel (2018)

Asia in 15 days

By all means, this was an ambitious goal. I wanted to see as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, which obviously meant having to make compromises, namely sleep. With a light drizzle and bleary eyes I set out to grab my first flight, in a series of many, from Toronto bound for Tokyo in Japan. Besides having been born in India and having gone every couple of years to visit extended family I had never been anywhere else in Asia.

It was not obvious to me, when I first booked the trip, that I was in-fact walking into an experience that would challenge both my body and mind.  Travelling solo has never seemed like an issue to me. I've done it before, having gone to Europe in 2016 after graduating from university. Therefore, this just seemed like the next step to take. It was Phil Knight (founder of Nike) who inspired me to take this trip when he wrote about his journey across the world straight out of school. More specifically, it was Phil's trip to Japan that helped him find his first manufacturing partner and the Zen gardens that helped bring clarity to his innate creative abilities.

Although I was able to write freely during my last trip, this trip had a different purpose. My objective was to see if I could conquer my fear of the unknown. It was to test my own fortitude in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. Three out of four countries on my itinerary did not have English as their primary language, and one didn’t allow me to access Google. Over the last 15 days I covered Tokyo (Japan), Kyoto (Japan), Hiroshima (Japan), Himeji (Japan), Singapore, Bangkok (Thailand), and Shanghai (China).

You can read more about my experience by clicking on the pictures below. The cities in which each of these was taken is in the left bottom corner.

Godspeed