Over the past two decades, I've made various trips to countries like Georgia, Colombia, India, and Palestine, more often than not alone — just the way I like it. The feeling I get from arriving in an unknown land is seriously addictive, and the people I meet along the way are part of the reason I continue. While solo travel has become increasingly popular in recent years (there are currently over 9 million #solotravel posts on Instagram), it's certainly not a new phenomenon, with adventurers like Martha Gelhorn and Freya Stark paving the way for women with a serious case of wanderlust. For me, it started right here in the UK.
I’ve always been curious, and rarely able to stay in one place for a prolonged period of time which is why from the age of 15 I’d sneak off from the small Midland’s town I grew up in to my aunt’s little bungalow on the Dorset-Devon border during school holidays to meet her for beach BBQs, fossil hunting, yoga and daily swims in the frigid sea. These trips continued until I was able to save enough money to venture outside of Europe for the first time, solo, at the age of 19. Guatemala, Belize and southern Mexico were my destinations of choice — countries I knew nothing about aside from the gorgeous music and hand-painted handicrafts I’d sold while working at a Latin-American store Lyme Regis — all I knew was simply that I wanted to experience them first hand.
