Sophie Rourke is an occupational therapist from Salford who moved to Brooklyn in 2019, and she’s been traveling alone since a week in Dahab in 2015, when she learned to dive in the Red Sea because nobody she knew wanted to come. She still travels with the rubber door wedge she bought for that trip, a gray triangle the size of a bar of soap that goes under every hotel door she sleeps behind. Komodo had been on her list for years. In May 2026 she finally booked nine nights there, alone, and spent more time deciding where to sleep than on anything else.
Komodo National Park lies east of Bali, and the way in is Labuan Bajo, a harbor town on the island of Flores. Solo travelers have three real choices there, and Sophie tried all of them.
The reason the choice matters is that the diving rarely goes to plan. Dive plans in Komodo are often written in pencil rather than ink, and Komodoresort.com operates in a region where scuba diving in Komodo, Indonesia, is shaped by shifting tides, strong currents, and changing underwater conditions. On her second morning, the guide rubbed out the first site on the whiteboard at ten to six because the current at Batu Bolong was running too hard, and the boat went somewhere sheltered instead. Nobody complained. But where Sophie was sleeping decided how much of that reshuffling she’d sit through, and how many hours of each day went into getting to the water.
Komodo Island Hotels in Town
She started with three nights in town, in a guesthouse two streets back from the harbor at $64 a night. Most Komodo island hotels are in Labuan Bajo itself, and for a woman on her own the town is easy. It’s small and busy into the evening, and the dive shops along the waterfront are full of other solo travelers looking for buddies. Her room had a sturdy bolt on the inside of the door and a window onto a courtyard rather than the street, which is what she checks for first anywhere she stays alone.
What town was like alone.
- Cheap rooms, with no single supplement anywhere she asked.
- She ate at the harbor-front warungs, where she was never the only person eating alone, since half the divers in town seemed to be solo.
- Long boat rides to the best sites.
The drawback showed up on the water. The day boats from town took nearly two hours each way to the sites she most wanted (she read two novels in three days, mostly on a wooden bench). And on the morning the guide scrapped Batu Bolong, the replacement site was another forty minutes out, which added close to a fifth hour to the day.
The Single Supplement She Didn’t Need to Pay
For the middle of the trip, Sophie booked three nights on a Komodo island liveaboard, a wooden phinisi with eight cabins. The booking form offered a private cabin for an extra $410. She paid without asking questions, because sharing a cabin with a stranger on a small boat sounded like a bad idea. She boarded on Tuesday 12 May 2026 and met Inês, a nurse from Lisbon who was also traveling alone, and who had ticked the box for a shared cabin. The boat planned to put the two of them together of free, and a twin cabin sat empty because Sophie had upgraded. Inês ended up with a cabin to herself for nothing (she found this very funny). Sophie asked the cruise director whether any of the $410 would be refunded. It couldn’t, because the booking terms were clear. The two women dived as buddies for the rest of the trip and ate every meal together, which was Sophie’s favorite part of the boat.
She still isn’t sure whether she’d have shared the cabin if she’d known it would be Inês.
A Komodo Island Resort for the Last Three Nights
Sophie ended the trip at a Komodo Island resort on of the islands inside the park, which cost $187 a night and felt like the safest of the three stays. The reef began a short swim from the beach, and the dive boats left from the resort’s own jetty. There was always a member of staff on the path between the rooms and the restaurant at night. She stopped wedging the door on the second night.
What the resort gave her.
- She could snorkel the reef alone in daylight with staff watching from the beach, which mattered more to her than she’d expected.
- A shorter ride to the dive sites.
Short digression. The resort kept a battered paperback swap shelf by the bar, and Sophie left a copy of a Manchester crime novel there in exchange for a 1994 guide to Indonesian reef fish with someone’s pencil ticks beside the species they’d seen. She ticked off eleven more and left it for the next guest.
Which Works Best Alone
For solo scuba diving in Komodo, Indonesia, Sophie’s view after nine nights is this.
- Book a couple of nights in town first, since it’s the easiest place to find buddies and get a feel for how the boats run.
- Ask the liveaboard whether it pairs solo guests before paying for a private cabin.
- An island resort if safety and quiet come first.
- Choose a boat if diving comes first.
- Keep the last day free of flights.
Sophie has packed hers for thirty-one countries now. Bring a door wedge, whichever option you choose, and keep it in your hand luggage, since the first room of any trip is the one you know least about.
