When Bally Bhamra retired at 60, she decided this was her time. She started travelling alone, hiking in Nepal, “to prove that senior citizens shouldn’t be afraid to go out and have adventures”.
Now, 14 years on, Bhamra is 74 and each winter she has ventured to a different part of the world. Last month, she left her home in Berkshire, UK, for south-east Asia, having recently returned from nine months exploring southern Africa and Madagascar. “If I can do it at this age, anybody can,” she says.
For Bhamra, “doing it” means avoiding hotels and hostels, and travelling across land from village to village, country to country. She prefers to stay with people she meets at the Sikh temple, or through Host a Sister, originally a Facebook group and now a site with half a million members, where women offer lodging to solo female travellers.
In Namibia, she stayed in a settlement of hundreds of illegally built homes without gas, running water – or toilets. “We used to go in the open,” Bhamra says. “It was fine. I had such warm hospitality.” In Malawi, she washed in a river. And in Mozambique: “It took two days to get from A to B, in a basic wooden boat. No seating. You just lay down in the boat. You’re challenging yourself mentally.”
Bhamra grew up in Malaysia. She and her husband married nearly 50 years ago, soon after they moved to London in the mid-1970s, having met at Chandigarh University in northern India. They have three children and three grandchildren. So why spend so much of the year travelling alone?
People always ask this, she says. “An Asian woman of my age travelling on her own is not the normal thing. People think: ‘She’s up to something.’” But travelling alone brings freedom. “You eat what you want, go where you want. I can walk 15km or hitchhike on a truck. Other people may not want to do those things.” Her family likes comforts. Travel itself is what comforts Bhamra. She always travels in winter, in search of warmth.
Still, wherever she goes, people want to know: “‘Why didn’t you bring your partner? Your children?’ But women should be able to go out there and do things and not be housebound,” she says. “I always think that, if a man can do something, why can’t we? What’s keeping us back?”
Bhamra was one of seven children in a family that often moved around. Her mother was a housewife, her father a police officer. “Everything was outdoors, apart from school. Cycling here and there. Mischievous. I could climb a tree, put my legs over a branch and hang upside down.”
“Wherever a person has their childhood, that’s home, deep down,” she believes. Initially, England seemed nothing like home. In Malaysia, people were warm and friendly and turned up at each other’s homes. “Welcome. Come in. Sit down. Have tea.” In England: “Certain people didn’t have that warm feeling. Sometimes, I’d get looks. ‘What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.’”
“I’ve gone through – not to say a stressful experience – a journey,” she says. “In the 70s, the UK was not very accepting.”
Bhamra’s first job was in payroll. Despite her deep love of being on the move, she stuck to the payroll path for nearly 40 years, working full-time through three pregnancies, at first counting cash into little brown envelopes, before ending her career with Amazon. “I’ve had enough,” she thought, when she turned 60. “No more.” She knew she would travel.
Bhamra is clearly capable and self-possessed. But does she ever feel scared alone?
“No,” she says. “And anything can happen at any time. Even sitting in my house.” Her Berkshire home has been burgled several times; abroad, she has never experienced anything like that.
Besides, travelling, she says, is really like moving from home to home for her. “I go into villages, stay with local people, understand the way of living, and appreciate that. I’ll do their sweeping, gardening, wash their dishes. I’m not a guest. I’m more like a member of their family.” She has stayed in touch with many of her hosts. “Sometimes these people are closer to you than your own relatives. Why? I don’t know. But I’m connected,” she says.
