July 30, 2025
I take people all over the world but am afraid to travel alone.
It’s a bit strange to start a travel blog by telling you I’m scared to travel, but here I am, the morning of my departure, with my suitcase and backpack packed, and that’s what’s going on.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to travel, and I love it for the same reasons lots of people do: it gets me out of my head and in my body; it offers me a new, fresh perspective; it awakens awe and sensuality; it deepens my compassion; it inspires me to write, and it liberates me from the steel trap of my mind; my worries and obsessions fade from view.
I love learning about people and places I don’t know. Or in this case, returning to Bali for the tenth time, returning to people and a culture I love.
All of that—plus right now, getting out of the US for a few weeks feels like a tremendous privilege and a relief.
When I lead Write, Travel, Transform trips once or twice a year, I always take someone with me. This feels so essential to me, I’ve made it a line item in the budget. I don’t want to be alone as a leader—or as a traveler.
The first few years I led trips to Bali, my wife Karyn came along and taught Iyengar yoga to the group before breakfast. But after a few years, Karyn didn’t want to accompany me anymore. She didn’t want to spend her vacation time being on a group tour; she prefers freer, exploratory travel. Plus, these trips were far from being vacations for the two of us—as the leader, I was responsible for whatever happened on the trip: focused on my students, my teaching, the needs and dynamics of the group, writing my blog, not the two of us. I understand why she opted out.
After Karyn stopped coming with me, for a few years, my friend and colleague, Evelyn Hall, accompanied me to Bali. We’d be roommates, she’d teach movement and meditation, and I’d have a companion in the evenings to debrief the day, troubleshoot problems, and mostly, play 500 Rummy and laugh. We were easy travel companions, and I felt safe in her presence. I knew she had my back, while I had everyone else’s.
Other years and to other places, I’ve invited other people to “be my person,” and for this year’s return trip to Bali, to write and study Balinese healing, I invited my friend Colleen West to accompany me.
I was thrilled when Colleen said yes. I knew we’d have a great time and that she’d have my back as a leader. I looked forward to showing her the parts of Bali I love.
We bought our plane tickets months ago.
But this summer, Colleen’s dog, Sky, needed surgery and has been experiencing complications ever since. I started getting messages from Colleen a couple of weeks ago, giving me status updates, filled with uncertainty about whether she could follow through on our plans.
Pretty soon, it became clear—she was going to have to cancel.
Of course, I was sympathetic. I understood her decision. Sky needed her and she needed to be with Sky. It was the right thing to do.
But my excitement about my impending trip to Bali began to wane.
I’d booked myself a ticket to arrive in Bali ten days before the start of the retreat: time to get over my jet lag, decompress, and enjoy one of my very favorite places on earth. I knew once the group arrived, I’d have no freedom of movement. My time wouldn’t be my own.
According to our plan, Colleen was going to be there as my companion for some of that time, and throughout the retreat to follow. But travel plans are only just that—plans. One of the things about travel that is so enlivening is that plans often don’t work out and have to be changed.
Now suddenly, I was going to be doing this trip on my own.
Despite all the stamps on my passport and the trips I’ve led around the world, I had to face the fact that I was scared to face those unplanned, open days alone. Here I was, celebrating my 69th birthday, and when it came to international travel, I still wasn’t comfortable traveling alone.
Karyn said, “Go for it, Laura. It will be great.”
Our daughter, Eliza, currently visiting from Egypt, has been traveling solo around the world on a shoestring since she was a teenager. “You can do it, Mom,” she said. “It will be good for you.”
Part of me agreed—the part that is already a bold traveler: ready to say yes to anything, eager to embrace uncertainty, up for adventure.
But another part of me was frightened: afraid of loneliness, isolation, facing my own mind. Would I know what to do with myself? How would I face each day? Would I be too shy to ask for help, to reach out, to set down my phone or my book, to meet people?
My anxiety reminded me of how I felt on the eve of a ten-day silent meditation retreat. Nervous but willing. Determined, but unsure I was ready to face myself.
After my writing class a week ago, I found myself chatting with my old friend Joanie Rippe from Hawaii. Joanie, a relaxed, intrepid traveler, and I had traveled to Vietnam together many years ago, back when she still lived in Santa Cruz. When I mentioned my situation and my loss of companionship, she replied, “Maybe I can come with you, Laura.”
That launched several days of conversations for Joanie—with her husband, with a friend she’d promised to visit, and it entailed a lot of research on her part.
I told her that the basics of her trip would be covered by me, and that I could offer her an allotment for travel—the $1300 it had cost us to buy our tickets originally. She’d have to cover any overage. She said that seemed fine.
But the next day Joanie reported that last minute flights from the Big Island of Hawaii to Bali were beyond exorbitant—up to $6000—impossible.
The day after that, she reported that she’d booked a round-trip ticket to San Jose. Her new plan was to fly to California, meet her brand-new grandson, then book a more affordable round-trip ticket to Bali from there.
“I’m a yes,” she told me. “You can count on me.”
Joanie would meet me a few days before the retreat began, giving me the best of both worlds: the exciting challenge of a week in Bali on my own and a friend during the rest of the journey.
“Great,” I said. “Send me your passport information. We need it for the hotels.”
Later that same day, I got another text from Joanie: she’d thought her passport was good for another year, but it was actually expiring in a few days.
Now she was facing a new challenge. Joanie lives in Pahoa, Hawaii, nowhere near any major city or hub. She’d be leaving in less than a week.
Could she get a new passport in time?
I immediately flashed back to the last time I’d traveled with Joanie, back in 2015. She was joining me on my Write, Travel, Transform trip to Vietnam, and the two of us were going early to enjoy some time in Hanoi before the rest of the group arrived.
On our designated departure day, Joanie and I arrived at the San Francisco airport, three hours before our flight, as instructed by our airline. But when we got up to the check-in counter, Joanie couldn’t find her passport. After tearing up her suitcase and her carry-on and her purse multiple times on the cold, hard floor of the international terminal, we realized the terrible truth. Like a responsible traveler, Joanie had taken a photocopy of her passport to carry with her, and she’d done so on her home copy machine. She’d grabbed the copy but had neglected to retrieve the original from the machine. It was still there, face-down, pressed against the glass.
A call to her husband confirmed it.
Five minutes later, he grabbed the passport and drove like a maniac from their home in the Santa Cruz mountains to the San Francisco airport—an hour and a half drive over a very windy mountain road—and delivered the passport into his wife’s hands just moments before final boarding for our flight closed.
What was it with Joanie and passports?
Stay tuned for the next installment to find out. And wish me well on the solo part of my journey.
I depart for Bali tonight.
