On tours, there’s no reason to go it alone

THE best-matched married couple I know, other than my wife and me, are a university professor and a psychological therapist. They met at an Appalachian music camp where each had gone on vacation to pursue an interest in regional folk songs.

I’m not suggesting travel as a means for meeting your future spouse. But for single people searching for an interesting way to vacation, I always suggest -- as I did in a recent column -- a tour that focuses on a special interest, theme or cause. On that sort of trip, it doesn’t matter whether you are married or single; everyone maintains a high level of involvement, and they mix and mingle. The single person is rarely alone.

But where do you discover such travel opportunities?

For starters, there’s the long-established Specialty Travel Index, which began as a magazine and is now also a free Internet site (www.specialtytravel.com) that lists special-interest tours offered by about 500 tour operators. There’s a tour that caters to every conceivable interest -- from African heritage to zoology, including agriculture, astronomy, church tours, fashion, horse breeding, jazz, music and dance, psychiatry and “social transformation.”

Whether you’re interested in doctors and nurses’ tours, jazz tours, tours for people older than 50, tours for collectors of antiques or for horse breeders, you can join a group of like-minded people to whom the fact that you are single and traveling alone has no importance.

Special-interest magazines are a good source of tour information. Virtually all such magazines carry classified listings of tours that may interest their readers.

If natural history topics -- archeology, wilderness areas, wildlife and inland waterways -- intrigue you, pick up a copy of Natural History, published by the American Museum of Natural History, at a public library or newsstand. Turn to the “Explorer Guide” section of small colorful ads at the back. There you’ll see an assortment of trips to the Amazon and the Galapagos Islands, to the Himalayas and Papua New Guinea, to fossil beds in Nebraska and Crow Canyon in southwestern Colorado, all attracting people with interests like yours.

From the same library racks, pick up a copy of Sierra magazine for lower-priced volunteer vacations to wilderness areas of the United States.

Interested in yoga and holistic healing, in physical development using Eastern therapies? Buy a copy of Yoga Journal at a college bookstore or newsstand, and you’ll find a variety of residential retreats and schools.

Do you enjoy traveling with progressive people? Buy a copy of Utne (formerly known as Utne Reader), turn to the “Travel/Adventure” classifieds and you’ll find options that include Quaker-led visits to New York, home stays offered by political “greens” and “Goddess Tours of Greece” led by a “feminist theologian.”

If cooking and cuisine are your specialties, or if you’re interested in arts and crafts, folk dancing and folk music, or fine art and sculpture, there are magazines awaiting you with trips you’ll enjoy.