Fortune favours the bold (female)
BGTW member Frances Linzee Gordon describes the merits of solo travel

“Aren’t you ever afraid?”, is one of the questions I am most asked as a travel writer.

What the questioner really means is: “Aren’t you ever afraid - as a woman?”

Though I’ve had my share of travel travails including arrest on suspicion of spying in Djibouti, a car chase with drugs barons in the Rif Mountains of Morocco, and a marooning on a river in south-eastern Ethiopia, I’ve never felt more vulnerable just because I was a woman. Quite the reverse: I feel my gender is a help not a hindrance when negotiating the hurdles of the road.

My first experience of independent travel was accidental. I had planned a trip around southeast Asia with a college friend aged 20. At the eleventh hour, my friend’s father declared it was ‘too risky a trip for two young women alone’ and forbade her from going. Faced with the choice of cancelling also or continuing, I set off solo.

My meagre student budget dictated hotels with paper walls riddled with peep holes. ‘Hotel’ at this price I discovered, was a euphemism for brothel. At night, I undressed or took a shower behind a sarong.

In the cities, my unaccompanied status attracted stares or mutterings from the men or, harder to ignore, hot fingers that fluttered on my hair and skin. Offers to act as guides turned into whining declarations of love or marriage, or unabashed propositions.

I soon learnt to spot trouble, avoid compromising situations, and turn my gender to my advantage. Week by itinerant week, I grew more savvy, confident and assertive. I began to relax and enjoy my travels; eventually I grew to guard jealously my solo female status, making weak excuses when other travellers suggested joining forces.

Some twenty years later and travelling now as a profession, I am more convinced than ever of the advantages of travel as a solo woman. Whatever the motive behind it - chivalry, kindness or even pity - countless are the times I’ve been granted interviews, visas, permits or special permissions flatly denied to male colleagues.

Perhaps the greatest value - and joy - of travelling as a woman is the universal access to society. Treated often as an honorary man, but welcomed warmly by the ‘sisterhood’ and children, women travellers have a unique access to the community. Fortune favours the bold (female)?