Passport 2 Myself Blog: Gay solo travel for self-rediscovery

About Passport 2 Myself

I have always been a traveller. Cars, flights, boats, buses and at times some quite questionable craft, I have been wandering.

From riding the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok to Moscow in my 20s to gliding in a private boat along the Kerala backwaters to celebrate entering my 30s, I always make sure to maximise opportunities to crease my passport.

While drifting, discovering and accumulating life experience, I was also building relationships that I hoped would anchor me. Two long-term relationships in my 30s, however, ultimately flopped. The first lacked passion in every way; we were simply adulting, going through the motions of life. The second was the love of my life; I painfully lost him when being at different stages of life proved a hindrance to taking the next step in our relationship.

And then the horizon shifted: my 40s. And single. Not in the dramatic, twenty-something sense of endless possibility; but in the quieter, more confronting way that makes you take stock. The friendships are steadier, the career more defined, the self more formed. Yet I now find the space beside me empty. It is not loneliness as much as awareness, a recognition, that this decade would ask different questions of me.

So, I return to something that had always felt like home: movement. Solo travel not as an escape, but as encounter. In my twenties, adventure had been about freedom and firsts; now it’s about intention. As a gay man travelling solo in my forties, I am not chasing validation or distraction. I am reclaiming curiosity. Revisiting the thrill of unfamiliar streets, new cultures, fleeting connections. This time with emotional literacy, boundaries, and a better understanding of who I am. Travel becomes self-rediscovery.

The adventures do not disappear with youth or relationships. They simply mature, just like I do. And so, I travel again, not to relive who I was, but to rediscover who I am becoming.
There are so many stories to tell, pictures to share and insights to impart. This is what I have done. This is what you can do.

G Siki

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding