5 women share their solo travel stories

Solo travel can be a great adventure. Aside from the usual clichés about self-discovery, setting out into the world with no one but yourself for company allows you to experience places on your own terms. Many women may be hesitant to travel alone at first, but once you’ve tried it, you’ll never look back.

According to the research firm Hitwise, people identifying as women accounted for 55% of searches for solo travel in 2019. It's no surprise, with Instagram feeds flooded with pictures of wanderlust-filled women exploring beautiful corners of the world. Backpacking and road-tripping are fair game now; here are the stories of five women working for Booking.com who set out into the world on their own.

Bethany Hewitt's father used to tell her, “It's a big world out there, make sure you see it.” His life had been filled with adventure and after he passed, Bethany decided to honour his words of wisdom. At the age of 25, she bought herself a backpack and a one-way ticket to Thailand. There, she met a fabulous community of solo female travellers who shared incredible stories over food and drinks. Different cultures, backgrounds and languages converged under the one thing they all had in common: solo travel. The empowering feeling of female camaraderie lingered even after they had parted ways. The experience revealed how – when travelling alone – you encounter people and get to know them in a way that you wouldn’t if travelling in a group or a pair.

Even with 27 countries under her belt, Majda Rafii finds that it's the casual interactions that make a place memorable. After getting used to the idea of being out of her comfort zone, she found that she was far more receptive to new experiences. This helped shape her attitude towards everyday life – with the added bonus of being able to see stunning places. Her favourite country to visit is India, which she's been to six times. The Golden Temple in Amritsar and the Taj Mahal have captivated her – but not as much as the people. Her morning chai routine in Mumbai always came with friendly smiles from the shopkeeper. Across the world in Tbilisi, she found similar heartwarming encounters, most notably with an old lady who treated her to local sweets as they sustained entire conversations using just hand gestures.

The snow capped mountains of Patagonia have always called to wild-at-heart explorers who want to marvel at these ancient ridges. Nature's sublime magnitude has a way of making us feel small, yet at peace. This was a feeling Chelsea Hobbis came to appreciate whenever she watched the sunrise alone, knowing that the vastness of the Antarctic lay on the other side of the horizon.

She was used to scouring the mountainous trails of Torres del Paine alone but on her last night, while stargazing, a man approached to sit beside her, asking if she wanted to know more about what she was looking at. He had a comforting presence, which prompted Chelsea to say yes. He pointed out exactly where the arms of the Milky Way streaked across the galaxy and explained everything in the sky above. He ended up being an astronomy professor at the University of Chile in Santiago. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

Solo female travel often puts you in situations where you simply have to face your fears in order to overcome them. For Alexia Brink, island hopping by herself in the Philippines taught her to get over her fear of the open sea. While traversing the northern mountains of Luzon to the southern beaches of Mindanao, she got her open water certification and picked up freediving. She learned how to find calmness in the deep blue sea that she once feared – and captured some great photographs in the process.

The rustic fishing village of Taghazout in Agadir, Morocco is a top destination for surfers and yogis alike. It was this balance of high-adrenaline adventure and spiritual mindfulness that Sarah Templeton had to draw upon right from the start of her trip. From having her card declined to being forgotten by her yoga surf camp pickup, she got off to a rocky start. Thankfully, Sarah remained calm – and luck was on her side. She waited at the airport and somehow managed to bump into others from her camp, and so began her best holiday ever. She woke up to fishermen sailing out at sunrise, surfing each day and practising yoga as the sun sunk into the Atlantic. Her favourite memory, though, is a harmless incident involving a boy serving tea at the beach. She accidentally overpaid him, so he kept topping her up with absinthe-laced mint tea all day long. Not the worst mistake.