On losing my nerve with remote travel
As a solo female traveller, Kia no longer ventures to remote places. Here, she reckons with the loss of the world’s wildest corners
“Kia, you have a pilot’s license, right?” asks Reena, my eldest sister, in our family group chat.
“No, but I like that as part of my lore,” I reply.
It’s nice to have lived the sort of life that leads my own sister to believe that I know how to fly a plane. It’s been a full life with plenty of adventure. I have indeed flown a plane (but only once) and jumped out of a couple of others. I’ve dived with sharks, crossed a landslide and bungy jumped into a chasm.
I’ve also travelled to some wildly remote places. I’ve camped by the caldera of Erta Ale in the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia. I’ve slept in Lac Abbé, a nowhere land at the eastern reach of Djibouti. I’ve spent time on Mafana Island in Tonga and Tanna Island in Vanuatu, mere specks in the Pacific Ocean.
Throughout it all, there has been one constant: Peter.
I love adventure travel – I’ve written before about why it’s sexist to assume that I don’t – but I also recognise that I wouldn’t have visited these remote places without a man by my side. It’s not that I wouldn’t want to; it’s that I feel I couldn’t.
Tour operators like G Adventures and Intrepid Travel which offer safety in numbers don’t go to places like the Danakil Depression. Would I, as an independent sole female traveller, be safe in a place like that? I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t take the risk.
I wouldn’t camp in Lac Abbé or venture to Mafana. Nor would I have done a “day trip” to Honduras during a month in Central America or an “overnight stay” in Belarus while travelling through Europe, like I did with Peter.
The fact is travelling with a man allowed me access to wild, remote or putatively dangerous places in which I wouldn’t feel safe alone.
After Peter and I went our separate ways in 2024, I have only been to well-plumbed places. Think Greece, Spain, Egypt. My only long-haul trip – 15 days in China – was on a group tour.
My next big trip will also likely be on a group tour. The fact that large swathes of the world are now closed to me saddens me deeply. I won’t take the iron ore train in Mauritania alone. I won’t self-drive across Mongolia like on one trip that was offered to me. I likely won’t go trekking in Mali. I may get to these countries, but I’m unlikely to venture anywhere truly remote.
Some operators do offer truly off-the-beaten-path experiences, but most affordable tours stick to popular routes thanks to established infrastructure and economies of scale.
Braver women may think I’m weak but, for me, it just isn’t worth the risk. I have been harassed on past solo trips to busy urban areas (e.g. followed to my hotel in Berlin, had a frightening experience with a man in Miami). And it’s not just unwanted sexual attention that’s a problem.
As I say in On travelling solo as a small brown woman, my size (and likely my ethnicity) makes people think they can bully me. When this happens in busy public places like airports and planes, I dread to think how I might be treated when there’s no accountability.
For some of my friends, travel just isn’t worth it. They hate queuing and crowds and prefer their creature comforts. That’s not me. I love travel. In particular, I love wild, remote places. I may come back to them in time but, for now, sadly, I’ll stick to the beaten path.
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