This doesn’t have anything to do with solo travel, per se, just travel, but I wanted to share this lovely quote by Matt Damon from his interview in the most recent Conde Nast Traveler (“Matt Damon’s Good Work Hunting”):

Damon believes in the power of travel to transform people. He wishes that Americans were less insular, and quotes the fact that only 21 percent of Americans have passports. “I think many of our problems as a country would be solved if people had thick passports,” he says. “There’s just no substitute for actually going and seeing things.”

Yeah. And if you have to go alone in order to do it, so be it.