Actor Avinash Tiwary is currently on a solo holiday in Koh Phangan, Thailand, and has used the occasion to reflect on what repeated solo travel ultimately teaches — a realisation he describes as a 'strange thing' that took him years and more than ten trips to fully articulate.

The Observation That Took Ten Trips

Sharing a series of videos and photographs from the island's scenic locales on Instagram, the 40-year-old actor wrote candidly about how his solo journeys have evolved. 'This is my tenth solo trip. Maybe twelfth. I have stopped counting. The first ones were adventures I chose. Now they are mostly the shape of my life... friends with their schedules, family with theirs, mine somewhere in the middle, the only person reliably available being me,' he wrote.

Koh Phangan is known internationally for its legendary Full Moon Party in the south, as well as a thriving wellness, yoga, and digital nomad culture — a fitting backdrop for the introspective post.

Alone, But Not Lonely

Tiwary was careful to draw a sharp distinction between solitude and loneliness. 'I want to be clear: I am not lonely. There is a difference. I am held by more love than I have ever been held by — my family, friends, strangers from places I will never visit. The love is real, the love is here. None of it is in the room with me right now,' he wrote.

He described a moment on the dance floor where the music was good and the light was 'doing something on the water,' before arriving at the observation that anchors the entire post: 'I am also entirely alone.'

When Solo Becomes a Way of Life

The actor reflected on how the character of solo travel shifts with repetition. 'The first solo trips were exciting. The third was different. The seventh felt like a habit,' he noted. He described a quiet mental refrain that surfaces mid-trip — 'next time, friends. Next time, not alone' — that appears even when nothing is wrong, and 'especially when everything is right.'

'The thing nobody warned me about: at some point, solo stops being a choice and becomes a way of life. The schedules around you don't line up. The people you love are also tired, also working, also somewhere else. You stop asking. You learn to enjoy your own company so well that the enjoyment becomes its own kind of solitude,' he wrote.

The Lesson Solo Travel Teaches

Tiwary distilled the central insight plainly: 'Solo travel teaches you this strange thing — you can be filled to the top with the love of an entire life and still be the only person standing in the place where you are standing.'

He closed without resolution, describing it not as a problem but as an observation. 'That being alone and being loved can completely co-exist. That a body can dance while a mind sits still. That the things we end up calling our life are sometimes the things we never quite chose…'

On Screen: Ginny Weds Sunny 2

Tiwary's latest film is Ginny Weds Sunny 2, directed by Prasshant, co-starring actress Medha Shankr. A spiritual sequel to the original, the film follows a solitary wrestler who re-evaluates his life after a young bachelorette disrupts his routines and challenges his core assumptions.