As I said in another post, in 2019 I won an interrail pass to travel for free around Europe. 

I used this for my first solo trip. I decided to go to Norway. 

Obviously, travelling solo has both; advantages, and disadvantages. 

It’s a completely different experience that you at least have to try and then choose between the two options depending on your preferences. 

When you are traveling solo, you’ve more freedom, you can pretty much do anything you want without relying on anyone else. 

At the same time, you’ve more responsibilities, which can be stressful but on the brightside it’s a good thing because it increases your adrenaline and makes you step out of your comfort zone more frequently. 

If you travel with friends/family then you easily have more people to share your experiences with, more people to help you each other out. And if you travel alone you’ll force yourself to meet new people and have certain experiences that you wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. 

As you can see both are great. Now I am going to tell you a short story of something that happened during that trip to Norway that clearly shows the peculiarities of solo travelling.

During my first day of the trip, I decided that I’d go hiking next day in the morning to a mountain in Bergen. 

And that’s what I did. I woke up relatively early. I waited for the cable car to start working and take me to the top of the mountain to start hiking from there (Mount Fløyen) to a different mountain (Mount Ulriken) for a distance of 15 km (9.32 miles).

It was supposed to take around 5 hours and I started around 8 am so I was supposed to finish around lunch time (13.00) I took some food with me anyways. 

Around 20 minutes after I started hiking, it started raining a bit. As time went by, the rain would increase and increase until a point where I had to start looking for shelter not only to wait for the rain to stop but also because all my cloth was as wet as it can get so I had to do something about it. 

I stopped by an abandoned place and I used the roof to protect myself against the rain. 

I had only advanced between 1 and 2 kilometers so I would have to continue at some point.

That’s what I did as soon as the rain was a bit less intense. 

Around the third kilometer, it started hailing too. 

As I kept on walking, I was so cold, as wet as I could get, my hands were freezing, I couldn’t even tie my shoes because I could barely move my hands as they were almost frozen. 

There was no place to stop, this was in the middle of the mountain, so I had to keep walking, following my route, which was indicated in different ways depending on the location. 

Around the 7th kilometer it was already 14.00 because I was walking really slow, I had to stop several times and I even got lost several times. 

Then, all of a sudden an immense amount of fog came out of nowhere. I could barely see anything. Until that moment I was guiding myself because there were some big crosses in some rocks indicating the path but because of the fog, I couldn’t see them until I was 50 meters close to them.

For that reason I got lost more frequently and started going even slower as my hands kept on freezing and I was getting colder and colder. 

It stopped raining and hailing for a bit but the fog was still there. 

Somehow I managed to make it to the 10th kilometer when the fog disappeared. 

It was already 5 pm and I had already eaten all my food. 

I took my phone out of my pocket for a second to see the battery percentage. I could barely do it since my hands were still freezing and I couldn’t even move them. 

Apparently, because of humidity, my phone had run out of battery way faster than expected. 

Slowly, I kept on walking, following the crosses on the rocks and the path started being indicated by some ‘normal’ arrows instead. 

Around the 14th kilometer I thought I had made it when I suddenly started following the arrows and I realized I had already been there. 

I tried following the arrows again and the same thing happened. 

I was clearly lost, I tried following the indications but it didn’t work. I was missing something. 

I kept trying for 2 more hours. It was around 7pm already, keep in mind I was supposed to finish at 1pm. I was hungry, my phone had no battery, I was lost, my hands were freezing, I was wet and cold. 

At that point I thought I wouldn’t make it. I was still considering going back to where I started. 14 more kilometers. Or even the worst case scenario, having to sleep there overnight. That’d be impossible. I would probably die. Actually both options were impossible. 

For the first time in like 2 hours I found some other people close to me. They were also lost apparently. They had the same problem with the indications. We tried to look for a way out with no luck.

We started looking for more people. We finally found some locals. 

They helped us find the way. 

We made it. 

We were at the end of the route. 

But that wasn’t all.

As the locals left, I was together with the people I found first. 

I was going to use the cable car to go down the mountain but they wanted to do it walking.

I was still all by myself.

At least I was finally in the city but the cable car left me in the suburbs and I had to get to my airbnb downtown.

It was 8.30 pm and there was no one there. 

I kept waking in what I believed was the right direction according to my instinct because I couldn’t use my phone. 

I finally found a restaurant so I could finally eat something. I was so hungry and so cold.

I entered it and then a woman told me it was a private place for meetings or something and the restaurant wasn’t open to the public. 

I was frustrated, as you can imagine… I asked her for directions to the city center. 

She told me I was actually quite close. I just had to keep walking straight pretty much. 

That made me feel a little bit relieved. 

I kept walking for like 30 minutes. 

At 9 pm I found the city center. I couldn’t believe it. 

I finally went to McDonalds to eat something. 

After I ordered I tried to charge my phone but it wouldn’t work. I figured that the socket at McDonalds wasn’t working.

After eating I finally arrived at my airbnb at around 21.30

I took off my clothes, took a shower… 

I was finally safe…

Or at least that’s what I thought…

I tried to charge my phone again but it didn’t work this time either, so the problem was with my phone. 

I was screwed. 

My phone died. I had lost my plane tickets, hotel reservations, addresses, communication with my family…

I asked my airbnb german roommates for their phone so I could call my parents. They were really friendly and they understood the situation. 

I called my parents and told them everything. 

We started to think about alternatives and the more we thought the more we realized how bad the situation was. 

It was late at night on a Saturday. The next day was Sunday so everything was closed and I had to leave that place on Monday to go to another city and I had no train tickets etc…

Then all of a sudden I realized that my phone was getting charged! 

It was probably because it was getting dry. 

I didn’t dare to touch it so I waited until it was completely charged and I turned it on. 

I told my parents and my german roommates everything was fine. I thanked them for their help and I went to sleep…

What a story… If someone told me that was going to happen to me, I wouldn’t believe it…

All this happened just because I was travelling solo and I wasn’t prepared for that hike. I made so many mistakes. These mistakes barely matter if you are travelling with friends or family but as I said at the beginning when you travel solo all the responsibility is on you.