Lessons solo travelling can teach women

I’ve hitchhiked in the Middle East, couchsurfed all over Asia, and took every local bus, overnight train, or scooter ride available.

Here are eight things I learned as a solo female traveller over the last two years.

1. What (social) media wants you to believe about a place is not reality

I’m not going to talk about the typical Instagram vs. reality checks, but about safety. Whenever I say how much I love the Middle East, or mention that I felt just as uneasy walking alone in parts of Germany as I did as a white woman in India, people often question my experience.

The general thought that Europe is so much safer than other places is mostly based on racism. 

I can’t emphasize this enough — life as a woman, in general, is more challenging than it is for men. It has nothing to do with the country you’re in, it’s about patriarchy and politics. 

I’m writing this from a privileged white traveller cis-woman perspective, but there are places that protect women’s rights more than others, and there are places that are more dangerous for women. 

But the prejudices we have about many people, cultures, and countries are often untrue. And the people warning you are often not the ones who’ve actually been there. Go out and build your own opinion.

Stay Wild Travel wants to reshape these narratives by taking travellers to these often misunderstood countries like Pakistan and Egypt.

2. While solo traveling, you’re solo responsible

As much as it might seem like the ultimate freedom at first, solo traveling can also be exhausting, but it will force you to become the strongest and most resilient version of yourself.

While solo traveling, you’re 100% responsible for all your feelings and decisions. Where to go, what to do, what to eat. If you’re in a bad mood, hungry, or don’t know where to sleep tonight, there’s no one else to rely on but yourself. 

You have to figure out what’s wrong and find a solution. This might sound easy, but how often do you see people venting their frustrations to others and having a partner or someone else step in? 

Solo traveling has taught me that I can handle all self-care tasks, even when I don’t know anyone and no one speaks my language. It allowed me to understand my body and mind fully — how I react, what I want – in an environment that’s completely free from outside opinions about who I am and what I “should” do.

I now prioritize my inner peace and well-being much better than before, simply because I learned to understand my needs in extreme situations.

3. We are so much more capable than we think

When I started traveling, I had never climbed a mountain, despite growing up in the mountains. I always thought I couldn’t do it because I wasn’t trained, I wasn’t competitive, and I was never one of those people who wanted to challenge their body, so I just assumed I couldn’t.

Then I did a visa run in Nepal and spontaneously went on a 7-day trek to a Himalayan Base Camp with a girl I had just met in a hostel because that’s what people did there. My new friend didn’t know the limits I had set for myself, and we finished the trek. A few months later, I climbed a 4,000-meter mountain top in Mongolia. 

Now, I don’t think I can’t do anything anymore - I just do it.

Ready to take on your own mountain adventures? Join Stay Wild Travel in Pakistan trekking to the base camp of the 9th highest mountain in the world.

4. Trust your gut solo travelling

Trust. Your. Gut. We, as women, are gifted with incredible intuition, but society has taught us to ignore it rather than listen to it.

This becomes crucial when solo traveling. I’ve heard many stories from other travelers who mentioned having a gut feeling that something wasn’t right but didn’t want to make a “big deal” or make others uncomfortable because women are trained to care for everyone and make them happy. 

I was in a situation where I should have said stop earlier. Please don’t make the same mistake. Whenever something feels off, it is. Turn around and go home. Someone else’s opinion of you or a “missed moment” will never be worth risking your safety. 

The more you walk away from uncomfortable situations or interact with diverse people and circumstances, especially from different backgrounds, the more you strengthen your intuition. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

5. People are generally good

If you’re traveling solo, you depend much more on the help and kindness of strangers, and it’s shown me a world of generosity and gratitude that I thought had vanished in our self-centered society.

Couchsurfing and hitchhiking have opened my eyes even further to the hospitality around the world. I’ve been picked up, invited to celebrations, fed, given a bed, and taken care of like I was part of the family all over the world. 

It showed me that we’re all just humans, we should look after each other and pay things forward. If you do good, good will come back to you. 

Seeing that this is still a big part of society in many countries and cultures gave me some hope.

Local experiences and people are at the heart of Stay Wild Travel's trips. We want you to experience the hospitality of the country we're visiting first-hand and learn about different cultures.

6. You can reinvent yourself every day as a solo traveller

I grew up with a general idea of how life should look, and realizing that there’s more out there than becoming a mother or following a career gave me more self-confidence than I could have ever imagined.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with being passionate about your career or growing a family, but it simply wasn’t what fulfilled me. 

I always had the feeling I wasn’t living up to my full potential, and traveling — being confronted by different life concepts and perspectives every day and trying out everything I wanted, because no one knew who I “really” was and therefore no limitation existed – opened up my mind to what life could look like. 

There’s already so much pressure from society when you’re a woman, so realizing that I could just live for myself and focus on personal growth, development, and learning from different cultures gave me the purpose I had been searching for back home. 

The social skills, resilience, compassion, and understanding of the world I gained in the last two years of solo traveling outshine everything I learned in university and my career combined.

7. Overpacking isn’t the way to go, nor is underpacking

Carrying heavy bags and paying extra for luggage is definitely frustrating, so seeing other travellers traveling light with just 20L daypacks makes you want to be like them.

When I started, I wanted to break free from all the beauty standards we as women are confronted with and aimed to have as little as possible — no makeup, no fancy things, nothing I would be sad to lose. 

But traveling full-time on a budget already comes with so many challenges: constant adaptation to different climates, little sleep, lots of instant noodles, and not-so-clean hostels. 

I quickly didn’t feel like myself anymore. After accepting that how I look still matters to me, and that I can be a low-budget traveller but also have the choice of nice clothes and some jewelry to make me feel prettier and more comfortable, I started to shop for things that represent my personality rather than just being practical. 

This helped me cope better with my ever-changing surroundings. In the end, it’s not about society’s beauty standards, it’s about having the choice without judgment.

8. There’s always a way 

It sounds simple, but it’s important to keep in mind: no matter how hopeless a situation might seem, there’s always a way out.

You’re never truly stuck. The more you travel solo, the better you get at finding solutions to situations like these. It gave me the strength of knowing that, no matter what I get myself into, I’ll always find a way out with the skills I developed from being responsible for myself — asking the right people, gathering information, using the right tools, and building a network.

Trust me, there will always be men telling you that you can’t do what you’re about to do simply because you’re a woman. Happened to me all over the world. Prove them wrong.

All of that said, it's okay if you're not quite ready to jump head first into solo travelling. Consider joining a group trip to get the feeling of solo travelling but with all the security of guaranteed friends, an expert local guide and everything planned for you.