Independence Isn’t Everything: Why Group Travel Matters More Than You Think
How a trip to Abyei reshaped my assumptions about traveling with others.title
I’m about as independent as it gets when it comes to travel. Over the last 15 years so years of traveling, I’ve gotten used to crafting every trip exactly the way I want it: choosing the destination, the timeline, the pace, the priorities, the risks I accept, and the comforts I forfeit (or more often, demand).
If I want to linger in a café all afternoon writing and people-watching, I do. If I want to skip a museum (or three) or an entire list of “must-see” attractions, I don’t think twice. If I want to take a long walk alone through backstreets at sunset rather than join a “must do” tour, I go.
That level of autonomy becomes addictive. It’s not just a preference, it starts to feel like part of your identity.
So when I recently joined a group expedition to Abyei, the small disputed region jointly administered by Sudan and South Sudan, it wasn’t just a logistical decision. It became a personal experiment in letting go of control, expectations, and habits I’ve built over years of independent travel.
Now, it would be near-impossible to organize a solo trip to Abyei, but even on top of that many of the reasons for this group trip were practical ones:
Cost-sharing, especially when chartering a plane
Strength in numbers, helpful in a politically complicated border region
Shared responsibilities, like shopping, packing, and dealing with logistics in a high-maintenance destination
But what I didn’t anticipate were the less obvious, deeper benefits, the ones that only reveal themselves when you travel with people rather than near people.
🚐 Shared Roads, Shared Lessons
Getting into Abyei is part of the story. It’s a journey measured not in miles but in patience.
First a flight to South Sudan’s capital of Juba, then a charter, then hours of bouncing along roads that are more suggestion than infrastructure. The heat, dust, and unpredictability wear you down fast, and yet, something interesting happens when discomfort is shared instead of endured alone.
When you travel solo, hardship stays in your head. You manage it, analyze it, process it quietly.
When you travel in a group, hardship becomes collective story-building. Someone makes a joke at the exact moment the vehicle hits the biggest pothole of the day. Someone else starts rating the bumps out of ten. Another digs out snacks and passes them around the Land Rover without saying much at all.
The circumstances don’t change, but the experience does. Challenge turns into camaraderie, without anyone planning it.
👀 Seeing Through Different Eyes
Traveling alone gives you clarity, but it can also narrow your focus. When you travel with others, you naturally inherit multiple vantage points.
When we landed at the Agok airstrip, someone else in the group noticed a line of kids watching us from a short distance. I was absorbed in aviation-geeking and almost missed them. A quick wave turned into a cluster of smiles, a bit of attempted conversation, and a set of photos that are now some of my favorites from the trip.
That moment reminded me how easy it is, even as an experienced traveler, to miss what’s right in front of you. Different people notice different things:
One person is drawn to faces
Another to architecture or nature
Someone else to small details in markets or daily life
Traveling with a group means your field of vision quietly expands. You see not just what you would have noticed, but what they do too.
🧰 A Bigger Toolbox Than Your Own
One of the biggest surprises of group travel is realizing how many different strengths quietly show up.
I’m used to handling my own logistics, making backup plans, navigating borders, and keeping a trip moving. But in a group, I noticed other kinds of value emerging:
Some people are natural organizers, keeping track of times, tickets, and bags.
Others are quiet observers, catching small changes in mood, safety, or surroundings.
Some are great connectors, more relaxed starting conversations with locals or breaking the ice.
Others are strong at practical problem-solving, figuring out to set up a mosquito net, rearrange beds to keep a room cooler, or make a basic setup much more livable.
You don’t necessarily sit down and assign roles, but they surface anyway.
Group travel forces you to do two things that independent travelers don’t always enjoy:
Rely on other people, at least a little.
Accept that your way isn’t always the best way, just one way among many.
And that’s a good thing. You still bring your own skills, experience, calm, adaptability, but now they’re part of a bigger shared toolkit.
🫱🏽🫲🏿 Connection Without a Shared Language
English in Abyei was limited, but curiosity definitely wasn’t.
Wherever we went, there were waves, smiles, and the universal starter kit of phrases:
“How are you?”
“Where are you from?”
“Why are you here?”
Tattoos were a particular point of interest. People would point, laugh, trace the shapes in the air, and then insist on photos, almost always carefully arranging us to make sure the ink showed clearly.
Not every moment has to be a deep cultural exchange to mean something. There’s value in simple interactions: a wave, a handshake, an awkward but sincere “hello.” Those tiny connections add up, especially when several people are having them in parallel.
Traveling as a group doesn’t dilute the authenticity of the experience; it multiplies it. Ten small encounters are still ten small windows into daily life.
🐄 The Art of Slowing Down
In Abyei, nothing moves quickly, least of all vehicles.
Cattle wander across the road at their own pace. Dust hangs in the air. The horizon feels vast and stubbornly unhurried.
When the environment slows you down, you stop treating slowness as an obstacle and start treating it as information. You see how people adapt, how they time their walks, plan their days, and build routines around heat, light, and distance.
It’s hard to learn that from a guidebook. It’s much easier when you’re in a Land Rover full of people watching it together, swapping observations as the landscape rolls by.
🌅 Presence Over Perfection
At the end of each day, the sun dropped into the dust and the village slowed down to a low, quiet rumble.
No one was debating where to go for dinner or which bar had the best reviews. There were no apps, no screens glowing in the dark, just conversation, stillness, and the occasional loud rumble of our generator.
In that setting, group travel took on a different shape. It wasn’t about “doing everything together” or marching to the same schedule. It was about sharing the same experience: the same heavy dry heat, the same lack of comfort, the same small joys when something went right.
By the time we left, I realized something I didn’t expect:
Traveling with a group hadn’t made me feel less independent. It had made me feel more human.
Travel alone teaches you self-reliance. Travel with others teaches you interdependence, and that might be the more important skill in a world that loves to pretend we’re all self-contained.
💭 Your Turn:
Have you ever taken a group trip after years of solo travel? What challenged you, and what surprised you? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments.