The other day I was remembering a trip to India I took a couple years ago. I was staying with a friend but joined up with a group from a church to travel to the city of Dharamsala, the capitol of the Tibetan government in exile where the Dalai Lama lives and works.

The team only stayed for a couple of days and were continuing in a different direction than I needed to go, so I spent an extra three days in the city, poking around, shopping and observing the sites. By the end of the first day I was bored.

There's something about traveling alone that I just can't do. I doesn't matter how amazing the sights or how intriguing the culture, if I don't have people with me to share in the excitement I don't have any fun. I bore myself so easily, in any culture.

To get back to my friends house, I had to ride the bus for ten (or was it twelve?) hours overnight. And that whole time, I didn't get off the bus for any reason. I didn't want to leave my bag alone, it was too big to carry in to the "rest stop" (if that's what you can call a few stands selling food on the side of the road) and I didn't want to get harassed by the Indian men in the food shops. Insecure and uncertain, I stayed on the bus and roasted in the heat instead.

I wouldn't have been half a pansy if I had been with a friend or two. We could have taken shifts watching the bags; they would have encouraged my adventurism and boldness. We could have discussed the quirky Indian ways and watched in amazement as our bus crossed through flooded rivers and squeezed down narrow village roads. The entire experience would be much more pleasant, the entire memory much more fond.