From the Vault: Solo Travel Safety for Women Beyond the Rules

Safety can become a giant question, one that seems to require a single answer before we are allowed to book the trip. But that is not how it works when you are actually travelling. What matters is the judgment you build in the small moments: where you stay, how a street feels after dark, whether someone takes your question seriously, and what you need in order to settle into a place.

This is an episode from the vault, and I am bringing it back because it is still one of the conversations we need to have before a solo trip. Solo travel safety for women is about learning how to pay attention without handing over your judgment or letting fear make every decision for you.

I talk about arriving in Morocco after dark, learning how differently a place can feel as the light changes in the Indian Himalayas, and living in Sudan during the Darfur war. Those stories are not a way to make one rule for every place but there is a lesson that has stayed with me.

I also talk about what it means to support your nervous system when you travel. I share some examples that have worked for me, to expose you to the possibilities and invite you to find out what works for you. You do not have to prove anything by travelling in a way that leaves you on edge. The point is to prepare well enough that you can be present once you get there.

In this episode:

• The crossbody bag and the trip plan
• What changes at dusk
• Reading a place beyond alerts
• The danger of a single story
• What supports your nervous system
• Staying in relationship with safety

This episode is for you if:

• you want to travel alone but safety is the question that stops every plan
• you are a woman over 40 who wants to prepare well without becoming consumed by worry
• you have read so much advice about solo travel that you feel less clear than when you started
• you want to trust your own judgment in unfamiliar places

For this weeks challenge, download the invitation at https://freedomlookslikethis.com/goalone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is an episode from The Vault, and I wanted to bring it back because safety is often the first thing women ask about when they're considering a solo trip. It is an important question, but it can become so big and vague that we stop looking at what we actually need to know. When I recorded this, I was preparing for a trip through Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. I was thinking about the small choices that help me settle once I arrive. I still think that this is a great place to start. Thinking about the questions you ask, what you notice, and what helps you feel resourced enough to enjoy the place you're going to and the place where you are. If safety is the reason you've not booked the trip, listen for the specific part of the concern. There may be something you can plan for, and there may be something you need to experience to know you can handle it. Most women think solo travel is about being brave or fearless, but it's really about letting go of the expectations holding you in place. This show is about what changes when you stop waiting and take yourself seriously, starting with intentional travel. I'm Demi Ann, and this is Freedom Looks Like This. Let's get started. I packed a crossbody purse that can't be cut. As I packed for an upcoming trip to Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, I'm aware of how intentional my choices are. What I bring, what I leave behind, and how much I'm willing to carry. I was in Vietnam less than three years ago and have traveled to several countries in Asia. And before that, I lived in India. Some habits from these places are still with me. They live in my body more than in my head. At the same time, I don't assume that experience means I don't need to pay attention. This is a different trip, I'm a different person, so I'm moving deliberately. I'm packing lighter than I used to. I'm thinking ahead about how I'll move through local transport, how I'll keep track of my things without worry or drama as I travel. Safety is part of the picture, as in all the little choices that I make about where to stay, about how to travel. I use tools like Tripit to keep track of all my travel plans. I have over 20 items saved for my next trip between hotels and travel, and I am going to four different countries. I used to use a spreadsheet, and well actually I still have one, but I wanted a way to quickly and easily see what's happening next with my phone. I just started using TripId regularly in planning for this trip, and I noticed that one of the features is around safety scores for each place. I took a look at the safety score that came up for Luang Prabang to get a sense of what's happening. And my plan is to treat each alert as a prompt to look more closely, not as a final answer. It helps me think about where I choose to stay, how I move, and what kinds of decisions I've been making once I arrive. For example, in Luang Prabang, I'm staying within walking distance of the night market. That choice comes from experience. When I visited Taiwan last year, I did something similar and that worked out really well for me. I've seen how a place can change after dusk, how you can walk the same streets and see the same buildings, but experience a completely different crowd and energy. Lighting really matters, and that kind of awareness doesn't come from an app. It comes from experience, my own and learning from others. I remember many years ago arriving in Esawera in Morocco with two friends. I got off the bus at night and there weren't that many people around. It was mostly men who were around actually, and there was a group of men who started hassling us as we looked for transport to our hotel. It was quiet and sparse, and I remember feeling exposed and being scared, but trying very hard not to show it. Having friends with me helped in that situation, and it would have been very different of an experience for me if I was alone. Another time in Lucknow we were at a train station trying to get onto an overcrowded train. We hadn't booked ahead and so that was the only option available. And there was a man slowly moving closer and closer to my friends who were sick and lying down. I was alert, paying attention to what was happening around us, and ready to scream or fight. We were going to Almora up in the Indian Himalayas, and when we got there in the afternoon, I went for a walk. It was beautiful. But then later that day when we went out again, the men started heckling us. I distinctly remember thinking how dusk can change a place. Since then I'm much more cautious at night. I'm likely to stay in, or if I do go out, I'll take a taxi, especially if I'm going alone. These experiences taught me the importance of paying attention and not getting too comfortable thinking that I know a place. Some places are more dynamic or volatile than others. And so it's good to have a sense of the kind of place you find yourself. I notice the lighting. I notice how people are moving, whether they're lingering or passing through. I want to know whether the energy feels settled or unsettled. Do people greet each other and make eye contact? What happens if I look lost or try to ask someone for help? Do people smile at me or avoid my eyes? All of this is part of the story, and it's more significant than what you read about on an advisory website. I lived in Sudan from 2005 to 2009 during the Darfur War. And despite what I heard on the news, I moved there because I asked friends who worked with NGOs where had they visited and found that the people are nice. And they said Sudan. And they were right. Day-to-day cartoon was fine. People went to work, life continued. Women smiled at me. I still paid attention to where I went, how information traveled. And when things shifted, especially in response to political actions around the world, I also needed to adapt. I was able to hold both the ordinary and the larger context, and they shaped how I moved through my days. I think about the danger of the single story, as Shimamanda Adechi talks about, especially when we talk about safety. When women say I won't go there, it's not safe, I notice two reactions in myself: frustration and empathy. The frustration comes from how quickly complexity gets flattened. How entire places can get reduced to one headline or one warning. Especially when the place being dismissed is somewhere I've actually been. The empathy comes from remembering how convincing fear can feel. So when Trippet flagged Luan Prabang as high risk, I didn't immediately dismiss it. But I also didn't hand over my judgment. I read recent accounts, I talked to people who've been there recently, and I looked at what's happening in border countries because borders really do matter, and so does timing. And then I made choices that support my nervous system. I'm not going to stay in a $20 night place there. It might be fine, but that choice isn't about luxury. It has to do with communication. I want to know I can ask questions and be understood. I want a place with a 24-hour reception. If I have a concern, I want someone to take it seriously and offer context. I'm going to notice how people respond when I ask about safety. Will they push it aside or will they provide some context? The response really tells me something, and I'm not going to outsource my care to a receptionist at a hotel I'm staying, but I want them to take me seriously, to show their concern. That's what I'm looking for in interactions. I could even call ahead and see what they see. I'm not concerned enough to do that, but I will kind of take stock of the situation once I am in the hotel. When I first moved overseas, I spent a lot of time reading travel advisories from Canada. I still register with the embassy when I travel, and that's because I want to know where help is available, especially in places where English isn't widely spoken or not the first language. I want to be prepared. I was living in Japan when the big earthquake happened. I happened to be outside of the country because I was on a school trip in Beijing. But when I returned days later, one of the most important things to me was to know where to get accurate information and how to stay in close contact with family and friends. What I noticed then and what I still notice now is that people farther away are often more alarmed than people underground. And so much information can make it harder to think clearly. So I limit my sources, two or three that I trust. I check in with myself and I reassess if something changes. I don't carry everything with me all the time. One of the things I notice about myself is that I don't tend to become hyper-vigilant myself, but I notice it clearly in others. You can feel it when someone can't relax, when they're constantly checking the time, reconfirming plans, pulling everyone around them into that state. The thing about hypervigilance is it doesn't stay contained, it leaks. When I'm around that, I feel it in my own body. Sometimes I try to help by putting things into a system, setting reminders, creating a plan, so the worry doesn't have to live in my head. When I travel alone without anyone else's anxiety in that space, my awareness works differently. I notice I pay attention earlier now before things escalate. I don't have to explain anything to myself. I can just pay attention. And that took time to learn. I used to prioritize being polite, making other people comfortable. And sometimes I've done that to the point of ignoring my own sense that something isn't right. So over time, I've built the confidence to stay grounded in myself and respond to what I notice without making it about the other person. Because the truth is it really isn't about them. If someone experiences my care, my self-care, as uncomfortable, I can't take responsibility for that, especially when the alternative is abandoning myself. Something else I've noticed over time is that our tolerance for ambiguity and change shapes where we're willing to travel. Some places require you to be comfortable with things shifting, plans changing or information being incomplete. In those cases, the answers are usually contextual rather than definitive. And that doesn't necessarily make these places unsafe, but it means that it asks something different of you. I've seen women judge themselves for not wanting that kind of travel yet. I've also seen women push themselves into it because they think they should. Neither of those feel especially kind. Part of traveling well, at least for me, has been knowing where I actually feel resourced. And I mean that from the sense of practically, emotionally, and thinking about my nervous system. That's something I talk about more inside the school community. I don't think it's helpful to talk about courage or confidence in the abstract. I want to help you consider and decide how you'll respond to uncertainty and how you're going to make choices that support your readiness instead of fighting it. When I think about safety now, I'm protective of nuance. I don't want women to feel ashamed for being cautious. Caution can come from experience and from care. It means you're paying attention. I also don't want caution to mean disappearing in your own life. I want us to be able to prepare and still enjoy ourselves, to be aware and also present. Thinking about safety on a trip requires us to hold complexity and think about many different elements to be able to come to decisions on our own and not just outsource decisions to someone else. The thing with safety is it's not something you decide once and for all. It's something that you stay in relationship with over time. Safety is not something we decide once. We pay attention, we make choices, we assess when we have more information, and we have to do that more than once, in different places and on different occasions. The invitation this week is for you to take yourself somewhere alone. It can be lunch, a museum, or it could just be a walk somewhere in your city that you've been curious about, but you don't usually visit. Notice when you're there, when you're in this unusual situation, what helps you settle? That is the useful information, and it's the same kind of information that you're going to need on a trip by your own. The free go alone guide will help you do exactly that. Find it at freedomlookslike this dot com forward slash goalone. And of course, that link is in the show notes.