Hey, I enjoy this subreddit and I admire the courage of all you people who just take their stuff to go abroad and come back with amazing experiences and tons of new friends.

I say admire because I myself am a pretty anxious and shy person. I just turned 29 and will soon finish my doctoral thesis. My whole life has been just studying, I went from high school straight to university, did my Bachelor and Master and then immediately started the PhD. The work is just not for me anymore and I really do not want to continue in academics. Physics people are weird (or I am weird), I don’t really connect with anyone of them. I have a few friends, but all they do is go out sometimes to drink or hang around at uni. I feel that I will lose most of them when I finish, and I wouldn’t really mind tbh.

I don’t know what to do afterwards, as I can’t find a career that would suit me, but I am sure I don’t want to just start anything half-satisfactory to do for the next 30 years. My life feels stuck and the last thing I want is to jump from one overextension to another. I don’t want to spend the summer looking for a job, I don’t want to see the same houses and cities, do the same boring things... My brain just screams: Get out, as far as you can!

So I decided to look at my possibilities and - as I don’t just want 2 weeks off and don’t want to spend much money - found that my best bet could be the working travel visa in Australia to be able to support my travel with some extra money if I need to. If everything goes according to plan, I can go there by the end of June and I thought of spending about 3-4 months there, traveling up the East coast, maybe some wwoofing, then probably going to Darwin, most likely visit Uluru and then end up in one of the big cities (if that’s a good idea?).

This would be the first time alone in a foreign country for me. I speak English fluently and hope to overcome my social anxiety, train my communication skills, become better at organising my life and gain new experiences, see beautiful places and all that.

BUT

When I think about the whole thing, I sometimes get anxious mainly because of two points (age and loneliness), and I hope some of you experienced travelers can shed a light on the topics for me, so that I know what I will be facing. All advice is welcome and of course I would be very happy if you shared your own experiences and stories with me!

I am already 29 and the vast majority of Backpackers in Australia just left school. I would feel old and laughed at when I stay in hostels with all the 18 years olds - although I found the tip on the web that I should look at the reviews at hostelworld.com to find out how old the guests are on average, I only found tons of reviews of 18-24 year olds even at the YHA hostels. Also, partying and drinking alcohol was never my thing. My question is, „older“ travelers: Which alternatives do I have, where the partying youth is not the majority? I seems like a kind of provokative question, but I would like to meet people in my age bracket, 26 and up maybe.

As a subsequent worry, I fear that I will not be able to find travel mates around my age, so my next question would be, how did you meet your company? Are there hostels that are frequented by not only the youth, and are those older people generally open to meet new travel mates? The only posts on the internet I found were couples that don’t need anyone else.

And then, to all the shy people: How is solo traveling for you, do you enjoy the solitude, do you have any tipps for finding like-minded people?