<< Feature Articles >> Suggestions for women travelling alone
Submitted by Runemage on Sunday, 27 August 2017 Page Views: 2214
Resources Trying to access some of the more isolated ancient places can sometimes be a bit unnerving if you’re a woman travelling alone. One of our members took a year out to travel on a solo tour of the UK, long before the internet made communication, and in some ways safety a lot easier to cope with.I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be to visit a more isolated site, maybe to check for any alignments at sunset or sunrise, or just to experience the atmosphere at a site outside the usual daily popular visiting times. I’d love to stay at a site overnight and see what inspiration it brings.
Being a woman, these things have always made me hesitate, and whilst it’s highly unlikely that anything would happen to me as a lone visitor, I’m very conscious of the fact that women travelling alone are a pretty rare species, even nowadays.
There’s a big trade-off between solitude and safety and I do sometimes think it would be good to have some female company to share the experience. Meeting other women who share the same interests, particularly quite niche interests like visiting ancient places off the beaten track has always been difficult. On the Megalithic Portal, we are a fairly small group and we live all over the UK, mainland Europe and the world, so meeting up to go and explore sites together isn’t always an easy option, although you are always welcome to ask in our forum.
There are lots of social meet-up apps for people with varying interests, but they often involve joining established groups and fitting in with what they want to do. What I’m looking for is a way to enhance my solo travel with the option of finding new female friends in the area who want to visit the same places as me, at the same time as me.
The internet has widened social communication so much, but as all lone women know, meeting up with strangers online can be dangerous, there’s no way of checking the person you propose to meet will be the person on the website. A web search will find you a few sites for women who like to travel, some help them find other women who are either living in their chosen destination who would be happy to show them around, or are like themselves visiting the area to see the sights and find the more off the beaten track places. For example, one of the more established ones is 5W which seems to cater for more mature members, but it’s not exclusively for women and has fees to join and continue membership.
If you’re in a younger demographic or looking for a travel buddy for gap years, solo jaunts and adventures, one free app called Tourlina is proving popular. It is exclusively for women and is purely for travel friendship meetups. Due to their registration criteria you can be assured that women you could meet have been screened by the team who designed the app, so it feels lot safer than just meeting social media contacts. They have a worldwide network, so no matter where you're travelling to, perhaps to visit an ancient site which is a challenge to get to, you can use the app to connect with other women (local or fellow travellers)who will be in the area when you are travelling.
<< Top Attractions That Make Hyderabad a Traveller’s Delight
Discovering Mexico’s Ancient Sites on your next Holiday / Vacation >>