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I have travelled alone through more than sixty countries, which sounds rather impressive until you realise I have been anxious in nearly all of them.

I have worried in Bangkok, panicked in Tokyo, overthought things in Vietnam and once spent most of a perfectly pleasant train journey through Sri Lanka mentally preparing for an emergency that never arrived. Outside the window, tea plantations rolled across the hills in glorious shades of green. Inside my head, a badly managed government department was holding an urgent meeting about everything that could possibly go wrong.

This is the peculiar thing about travelling with anxiety. You may be crossing continents, climbing mountains or wandering through the backstreets of Kyoto, but a small part of your brain remains at home, wearing a cardigan and suggesting you check the door again.

Anxiety has accompanied me for years. It has never been invited, never contributes towards accommodation and is absolutely hopeless at choosing restaurants. Nevertheless, it turns up reliably, usually just before departure, carrying a clipboard covered in alarming possibilities.

What if I miss the flight? What if I become ill? What if nobody understands me? What if the hotel has one of those communal breakfast tables where strangers expect conversation before coffee?

The temptation is to wait until the anxiety disappears before travelling. Unfortunately, this is rather like waiting for every pigeon to leave Trafalgar Square before sitting down. You could be there for some time.

So I no longer ask anxiety for permission. I acknowledge it, make practical arrangements and continue packing.

I Separate Fear From Fact

Anxiety speaks with tremendous authority for something that is so frequently wrong.

It does not say, “There is a small possibility that you may feel uncomfortable.” It says, “This will be a catastrophe, probably involving public humiliation, gastrointestinal distress and an embassy official who has just gone to lunch.”

Before a trip, I write down exactly what I am worried about. Not the vague version, such as, “Something might go wrong”, but the specific fear underneath it.

Perhaps I am worried about arriving late at night and not finding the hotel. That is a genuine concern, but it is also a solvable one. I can arrange an airport transfer, save the address in the local language, download an offline map and take a screenshot of the booking.

Once a fear becomes a practical problem, it usually shrinks. Not always, of course. Sometimes it merely puts on a smaller hat. But that is still progress.

I ask myself three questions: what exactly am I afraid will happen, how likely is it, and what could I do if it did happen?

That final question matters. Anxiety likes to pretend that any problem would leave me standing helplessly beside a luggage carousel until retirement. In reality, I have dealt with cancelled flights, lost bookings, sudden illness, confusing transport systems and taxi drivers who appeared to regard road markings as decorative suggestions.

I may not enjoy these situations, but I can manage them. Confidence is not believing nothing will go wrong. It is knowing that if something does, you will probably cope, complain privately and eventually turn it into an anecdote.

I Make the First Day Deliberately Boring

In my younger years, I felt compelled to begin every trip with purpose. I would arrive after a twelve-hour flight and immediately attempt to visit three temples, a market, a museum and somewhere recommended by a man on the internet called Brad.

This was idiotic.

Now, my first day has one objective, to arrive. I choose accommodation that is easy to reach. I check in, unpack a few things and take a short walk around the neighbourhood. I locate a convenience store, a cafe and somewhere selling food I can order without having to perform an improvised theatrical interpretation of a chicken.

That small walk is enormously important. It turns an unknown place into a series of recognisable landmarks. There is the pharmacy. There is the station entrance. There is the little restaurant with six plastic chairs and a menu featuring photographs of meals taken from angles normally associated with property surveillance.

By the following morning, I no longer feel entirely untethered. I have begun building a mental map, and anxiety dislikes maps because they remove some of its favourite fog.

I Create a Small Radius of Safety

When I arrive somewhere unfamiliar, I do not immediately try to conquer the entire city. Cities dislike being conquered before breakfast.

Instead, I establish a small, comfortable radius around where I am staying. I walk the same streets more than once. I return to the same cafe. I learn which exit to use at the nearest station, a detail that sounds trivial until you emerge from the wrong one in Tokyo and discover you have apparently entered a separate administrative region.

Familiarity is calming. On the first visit to a cafe, I may feel conspicuous. On the second, I recognise the menu. By the third, someone may nod when I enter. This modest acknowledgement can feel surprisingly significant when you are alone.

It says, in effect, “You have been here before. You understand how this works. Nobody is about to demand that you explain yourself.”

My world gradually expands from one street to several streets, then to a neighbourhood, then to the city beyond. This is how I travel when anxiety is loud. Not in heroic leaps, but in manageable circles.

I Plan Enough, Then Stop

Planning can reduce anxiety, but it can also become anxiety wearing reading glasses.

There comes a point when researching transport options is useful. There also comes a point when you are reading a fourteen-year-old forum discussion about whether the left luggage office at a provincial railway station accepts bags with wheels. I have crossed that point many times.

These days, I organise the things that would genuinely cause stress if left uncertain: my first night’s accommodation, my route from the airport, travel insurance, access to money, copies of important documents, any medication I need, and a working phone connection.

After that, I allow the trip to breathe. I do not need to know where I will eat lunch on the ninth day. Indeed, the person I will be on the ninth day may have developed an unexpected fondness for noodle soup and abandoned the entire schedule.

Overplanning gives the illusion of control, but travel has never been particularly interested in our illusions. Ferries are delayed. Museums close. Weather arrives without checking our itinerary. Somewhere, inevitably, a public holiday will occur that no website mentioned.

A little preparation creates security. Too much preparation creates a hostage situation involving spreadsheets.

I Do Not Confuse Discomfort With Danger

This has taken me years to understand.

Anxiety often interprets discomfort as evidence that something is unsafe. A crowded station, an unfamiliar meal, a confusing announcement or a conversation I was not expecting can produce the same physical alarm as genuine danger. My heart races. My muscles tense. My mind starts drafting farewell letters.

But feeling alarmed does not always mean I am in danger. Sometimes it means I am tired, overstimulated or standing in a queue where everyone else appears to understand a system that has been kept secret from me personally.

I try to pause and name what is happening. “This is uncomfortable.” “I do not know what to do yet.” “I need a quiet place.” These are very different statements from, “I cannot cope.”

If I feel overwhelmed, I step away. I sit down. I find a cafe, return to my room or walk somewhere quieter. I no longer regard this as failure.

A hotel room is not a place where travel goes to die. Sometimes it is simply where the nervous system goes to remove its shoes.

I Build Quiet Into Every Trip

For years, I travelled as though every waking hour had to justify the cost of the flight. If I had travelled four thousand miles, I felt morally obliged to be looking at something significant. Preferably something listed by UNESCO.

Now I deliberately schedule empty time. I sit beside rivers. I wander through residential streets. I visit temples early in the morning, before tour groups arrive carrying matching hats and the determined expressions of people who have been promised seventeen attractions before lunch.

Quiet does not diminish a journey. It allows me to notice it.

In Bangkok, I enjoy the small alleys where washing hangs above potted plants and elderly residents sit outside watching the neighbourhood perform its daily routine.

In Japan, I have spent long, contented periods walking through streets where apparently nothing was happening, except bicycles passing, curtains moving and someone carefully watering flowers.

These moments rarely appear on lists of essential attractions. Nobody sells timed tickets for them. Yet they are often the parts I remember most clearly. Anxiety narrows attention towards threats. Quiet observation opens it again.

I Carry a Few Dependable Comforts

There is a fashionable idea that meaningful travel requires abandoning comfort and surrendering completely to uncertainty. This is often promoted by people who have never tried surrendering to uncertainty while sleep-deprived at an airport at 2.30 in the morning.

I carry small things that help me feel grounded. Familiar headphones. A book. Downloaded music. Tea bags from home, because occasionally the British nervous system requires immediate technical support.

I keep essential items in the same pockets of my bag. Passport in one place, wallet in another, medication somewhere accessible. I do not reorganise everything creatively halfway through a trip because I already know how that ends, with me standing in public, emptying my belongings onto a bench while becoming increasingly convinced I have been robbed by myself.

These routines may seem mundane, but anxiety is often soothed by predictability. The world outside can remain gloriously unfamiliar. My passport does not need to join in.

I Accept That Some Days Will Be Difficult

Not every day abroad becomes a triumphant declaration of personal growth.

Sometimes I wake feeling anxious for no obvious reason. I may cancel a plan, eat something familiar and spend the afternoon watching life from a cafe rather than participating in it. In the past, I would criticise myself for wasting the day.

Now I understand that travelling with anxiety requires flexibility, not punishment. A difficult morning does not invalidate the journey. Nor does retreating to my room for a few hours mean anxiety has won. It means I have recognised my limits before turning mild unease into a full internal production of Les Miserables.

The important thing is what happens next. Perhaps I try again later. Perhaps I take a shorter walk. Perhaps I simply rest and begin again tomorrow. Travel is not an endurance test judged by a panel of aggressively cheerful backpackers.

I Remember Why I Chose the Destination

When anxiety becomes intense, it reduces a place to logistics and threats.

The destination stops being Kyoto, Hanoi or Chiang Mai. It becomes airports, transfers, unfamiliar food and the possibility of needing a toilet at an inconvenient moment.

So I remind myself why I wanted to go.

Perhaps I wanted to see morning light on a temple roof. Perhaps I imagined sitting beside the Mekong with a coffee. Perhaps I wanted to walk through a neighbourhood I had read about for years and finally discover what it smelled and sounded like.

That image becomes a compass.

I do not travel because I am fearless. I travel because curiosity still manages, however quietly, to outvote fear.

Sometimes the vote is close. There are recounts. Anxiety demands an inquiry.

But curiosity usually wins.

I Stopped Waiting to Become Brave

For a long time, I thought experienced travellers eventually became calm, decisive people who strode through airports wearing linen and understanding every announcement.

This has not happened.

I remain capable of arriving at the correct boarding gate and then checking the screen seven times in case the destination has changed.

But I have learnt that bravery is not a feeling that arrives before action. More often, it appears afterwards, when you look back and realise you did something while afraid.

Every trip adds to the evidence.

I have been anxious before and still boarded the plane.

I have felt lonely and still gone outside.

I have been overwhelmed and found my way back.

I have sat alone in foreign cities, frightened and exhilarated in almost equal measure, and watched the unfamiliar slowly become ordinary.

That is the part anxiety never predicts.

It tells you how difficult the first step will feel, but never mentions the morning when you walk into your usual cafe and the owner starts making your coffee before you have ordered. It warns you about getting lost, but says nothing about the quiet lane you would never have discovered otherwise. It describes every conceivable disaster, but omits the possibility that you may feel astonishingly alive.

I still listen to anxiety. Occasionally it notices something useful.

But it no longer chooses the destination.

It may come along for the journey, muttering darkly from the passenger seat and insisting we should have stayed at home.

I simply let it mutter.

Then I keep going.

If any of this sounds familiar and you’re wondering whether solo travel is still possible for you, it might help to read why I think there has never been a better time to start.

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A note on how I write: Every trip starts with a journal, filled in wherever I happen to be; on a bus, plane, train, or in a backstreet cafe that has clearly seen better days. It’s not tidy, and it’s not always legible even to me. When I get the time, I use AI to help turn those notes into something readable, organising drafts and occasionally rescuing a sentence that has wandered off without me. The experiences, the perspective, the humour and every editorial decision remain entirely mine. As for the photos, I’m not remotely fond of having my picture taken, family portraits included, so I also use AI to help visualise the places and moments I write about.