No Negotiations: Why I Traded My Routine for the Sahara

Morocco: I went because I couldn’t switch my brain off.

I’m not sure if any of you have been in that position where you don’t decide to burn out, you just… drift into it.

Routine is great. I actually like routine. You get up, you exercise or you don’t, you go to the gym or you get ready for work, you go to work, you come home, you make dinner, you go to bed. It’s grounding. It’s adult. It’s stable.

And then one day it isn’t.

I was working too many hours. I was stressed. I couldn’t sleep. I found it really hard to unwind and switch my brain off. My partner didn’t have any holiday left for the year, and I was searching, searching for an escape, searching for something else, searching for any way I could reset without having to blow up my whole life to do it.

Traditionally, I travel with friends or with my partner. I’m the planner type. I like building the route, choosing the places, optimising the day. And because of that, I’ve never really embraced the idea of paying someone to go on a tour by yourself. I’ve often viewed it as not the best way I could spend my money because I could generally do it better myself.

I was wrong.

I’m happy to admit it. No one likes being wrong, but I do love having my perspective changed. I love being convinced, even though being convinced is hard. So I decided to go away without my partner, use the rest of my holiday allowance, and I started looking properly. I was on a fairly restrictive budget. I’d never been to Morocco before. I personally love every African country I’ve been to so far, and I’d heard great things about Morocco.

So I booked my first solo trip with Intrepid on a group tour, South Morocco, and as cliché as it might sound, it was fantastic.

Not because Morocco is “magical” (it is, and that’s not the point). It was fantastic because it was exactly what I needed: structure I didn’t have to hold, and company I didn’t have to manufacture.

The bit people don’t always say out loud: solo doesn’t always mean you want to be alone

As a neurodiverse individual, I tend to see the world in a different light to most. Not better, not worse, just different. That’s one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to photography. There’s something about those quiet moments where you take a photograph and it’s just… presence. You’re in that moment and nothing else exists. Even the air feels sharper, like your senses have stopped being background noise and started being information again. And even when I’m not taking photos, the way my brain works is always looking for a different angle, a different viewpoint, a different way of seeing things.

That’s part of what I wanted from Morocco. I wanted the trip to be a chance to take photographs, yes, and also to see the world from the viewpoint of a group tour while going on my own. Which sounds like a contradiction until you do it.

Intrepid did a fantastic job from the start. We flew into Marrakesh, and I had some time before meeting the group to explore and get my bearings.

Marrakesh is intense. I love that intensity, even though I also crave peace, quiet, and the connection of nature. The colours. The noise. The constant movement at the edges of your vision. The warmth on your skin even when you’re standing still. The way the streets feel alive, not in a tidy way, in a real way. People approaching you in the street asking you to buy whatever is in their store. I find it fun. Not everyone does. Some people find being hassled by street vendors uncomfortable, and I get that, but a smile and polite conversation goes a long way.

And here’s the thing: Marrakesh is intense even when your nervous system is calm. When your nervous system is already fried from work, it becomes a kind of mirror. It shows you what state you’re in. It’s not just busy, it’s sensory, and you can feel that in your shoulders, your breath, the way your brain keeps trying to do ten things at once.

My quiet worry: what if I don’t vibe with anyone?

Before I went, I had a few worries that I didn’t really say out loud.

One was the obvious one: what happens if the people on my tour just aren’t my people? I’ve never had much trouble getting on with people from different ages and backgrounds. Especially when travelling, you tend to meet really wonderful and unique people. You don’t always relate to everyone and you don’t always become best friends. When you’re travelling solo within a group, you can’t exactly disappear into your own friend bubble if the vibe is off.

You can’t create chemistry on demand.

That said, for most people, if your mind is open to it, you can find common ground. At least enough to get you through a tour together. So I wasn’t panicking about it. It was just… there. A small thought running in the background.

My other worry was more personal: my mental state wasn’t as calm as I wished it was. I was coming straight out of stress and overwork and living in my own head. And here’s the slightly ironic part: I enjoy socialising and I probably lean towards extroversion, but because of my neurodiversity, it takes a lot of energy out of me. I take longer to process information than other people, so I do a lot of reflection to help me catch up with the processing. When I’m run down, or there is too much going on I can show up as more introverted, even if I feel like being extroverted. 

So I was thinking: will I show up in the best light? Will I have the energy? Will I have the capacity to be “on” around strangers?

I don’t have a strong view on whether people like me or not. I am who I am. I do like getting on with people. I like ease. I like warmth. I like that feeling of a shared table, voices overlapping, someone laughing properly, not politely.

Our group was very mixed: people in their 20's,  50s and 70s, men and women, couples, people from Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK. And honestly, it’s amazing how much you can learn about people in eleven days.

The strange little social experiment of a group tour

There’s a bit at the start of any trip like this where everyone is slightly nervous.

There’s almost an element of social bonding that has to happen before people trust each other and feel comfortable. You’ve all been put into a new environment together and told, “Right. You’re going to spend the next eleven days with these strangers.”

From a modern day perspective, philosophically even, it’s quite an odd thing for us to do.

We don’t say hello to strangers on the street and decide we want to spend time with them. We don’t bump into someone in a hotel lobby and casually agree, “Sure, let’s share dinners and long drives and early mornings together for the next week and a half.”

But you pay some money, you end up in a lobby together, and somehow it becomes acceptable. And more than acceptable, it becomes good. It becomes the point.

There’s something weirdly relieving about that. Because no one has to perform their way into friendship. You’re not trying to make plans. The plan already exists. You just have to show up.

What it gave me (without me having to earn it)

I’m not going to go into every detail of what we did each day. You can find itineraries and highlights on the intrepid site. What I want to talk about is what the trip gave me, and what surprised me.

This was the first time I’d been away on my own in a group tour setting. I’ve travelled to different parts of the world, Africa, Asia, but it was always with friends. And I was uncertain about going away without my partner and without any friends because, to me, shared experience is what creates the memories. Being able to repeat and retell the shared experience with your family, friends, or partner is what keeps the trip alive.

What I hadn’t really thought about is that I would actually make friends. Real friends. The kind you still keep in contact with years later.

And the person I stayed in touch with is not someone I would have predicted. They don’t match the playbook style of who the rest of my friendship group are. They’re my parents’ age, in their 50s, they’re a dairy farmer, they live in New Zealand, their sons live in different countries… and yet we still talk every now and again, three or four years later. I don’t live in New Zealand. Our lives aren’t similar on paper. But that’s kind of the point. This trip cracked open a type of connection that normal life doesn’t really offer.

It made me realise that meeting people doesn’t have to mean finding people just like you.

Freedom isn’t always “no plans”. Sometimes it’s “no negotiations”.

This trip also gave me freedom, but not the Instagram version of freedom.

We went into parts of the Sahara Desert, and I was able to unwind. I was able to socialise around a campfire with everyone, tell stories, listen to other people’s lives, the fire crackling and popping, warmth on your face and cooler air at your back, that quiet shift at night where voices get softer and more honest. And then in the morning, I was able to be free. Proper early morning, where the world is still half asleep, the air cooler, your breath a little more visible, the sand holding the cold of the night for longer than you expect.

And I don’t mean free in the sense of not having work. I mean my mind was free.

Because when you travel with a partner, and I love travelling with my partner, there are always conditions and considerations. You compromise. You check in. You think about whether they’ll enjoy what you’ve planned. You think about whether you’re pushing the day too hard.

For example: I love getting up early, climbing something at sunrise, scouting a location, playing with the light through my camera. That’s relaxing to me.

Doing things is relaxing to me.

There’s something about that first light, the way shadows stretch and the landscape suddenly has depth, the tiny changes every minute that make you feel like you’re catching something that won’t repeat itself.

My partner relaxes by relaxing. By doing less.

Neither is right or wrong. It’s just different.

And sometimes, when you’re burnt out, even small negotiations feel like work. Even small decisions feel heavy. Not because the other person is demanding, but because your brain is already carrying too much.

On this trip, I didn’t have to worry about anyone other than myself. I didn’t have to worry what time I went to bed. I didn’t have to persuade someone else to get up early. I didn’t have to manage anyone else’s energy.

Someone else held the route. The group held the social environment. And I got to choose how much of myself to bring each day.

So I’d sit by the campfire and talk if I wanted to. And then I’d get up before sunrise if I wanted to, and go and scout a spot for photos. I could play with the dunes and the light and feel that unfiltered creativity again, the sand shifting under your feet, the quiet so big it feels like it has weight, the camera becoming a way of listening rather than capturing.

Corporate jobs tell you to be creative, but there are always bounds and constraints imposed by other people. On this trip, the only thing imposing my creativity was myself. And that felt like oxygen.

It wasn’t even about the results. It was the process. It was feeling like a person again.

Connection doesn’t have to be intense to be real

Another surprise: how quickly connection forms when the conditions are right.

Not forced. Not fake. Just… natural.

At the start, you don’t know anyone. There’s that first day energy. Everyone is polite, a bit tentative, a bit self aware.

And then slowly, the group becomes a shared context. Inside jokes form. People open up. You hear about lives you would never normally brush up against. You see how different people relax, what they notice, what they’re scared of, what they’re excited by.

And even if you don’t become best friends with everyone, you don’t need to. You just need enough trust to feel safe being yourself.

That, for me, was an antidote to loneliness in a way I didn’t expect. Not because I was lonely in the obvious way, but because stress can isolate you inside your own head. When you’re burnt out, you can be surrounded by people and still feel separate. You can be “fine” and still feel like you’re watching your life from behind glass.

This trip pulled me out of that glass.

The small, weird joy: goats in trees

I know this sounds random, but I’m going to include it because it’s exactly the kind of detail that reminded me I was alive.

One of the things I loved in Morocco was seeing goats in trees.

For someone that loves nature, Morocco isn’t the place that you would naturally think to go see wildlife. But before I went there I’d seen goats in trees on natural history documentaries and I was so excited to see these animals climbing up trees. It’s a behaviour I’ve never seen before. You notice it first as shape and movement, then your brain catches up and you realise what you’re looking at. A goat balanced where your mind says it should not be balanced. A sudden bleat, a rustle of leaves, this very ordinary animal doing something completely surreal. It made me laugh in that way you do when you’re genuinely surprised, not performing delight, just caught off guard by how weird the world can be.

It was such a simple moment, but it hit that part of my brain that loves the world for being strange and surprising. The part of me that gets curious. The part of me that isn’t just surviving the week.

The honest conclusion: I didn’t need “me time”. I needed “not holding everything time”.

By the end of the trip, the biggest thing I’d gained wasn’t a photo collection (although I did take photos). It wasn’t even “confidence” in the usual sense.

It was a kind of lightness.

Solo travel didn’t make me more independent. If anything, it gave me permission to be less responsible.

Less responsible for the plan. Less responsible for keeping someone else happy. Less responsible for making sure the trip was “worth it” for anyone other than me.

And in that space, I connected. I connected with people I wouldn’t have predicted. I connected with my creativity again. I connected with the present moment in a way that work had been blocking.

Three or four years later, I still speak to that friend from New Zealand. I still remember the campfire conversations, the smell of smoke in your clothes the next morning, the way the firelight made everyone’s faces look softer, more human. I still remember how it felt to wake up before sunrise and just… go, the air cool, the world quiet, the sand underfoot shifting as you walk. No debate. No guilt. No negotiation. Just a quiet, personal decision that belonged to me.

And maybe that’s the biggest thing I didn’t realise I needed: not escape, not reinvention, just a reset where my mind could finally be free.

Leaping Fox. Exploring the unseen.