Life in immigration

Updated: 04/09/19 | April 9th, 2019 This is a guest post by Laura, our former resident expert on female travel. Contrary to what you may have heard, solo travel doesn’t have to be scary; in fact, you might end up loving it. Now, that doesn’t mean solo travel is always easy. It tests my courage, as well as my patience and willingness to adapt to situations outside of my comfort zone. But despite the challenges, because of solo travel, I’ve met people and had adventures I don’t think would have had otherwise. Traveling alone has taught me many things and opened up many great doors. Some of my favorite memories are below: “Come Stay with Me” While laying by a pool in Aqaba, Jordan, I was approached by two women who were teaching in Amman. One of them had seen me running that morning and informed me that she was also running in the Dead Sea races. She graciously invited me to stay with her in Amman. Although we had less than a five-minute conversation, I contac...

Posted: 10/28/2010 | October 28th, 2010 This is a guest post by Laura, one of our resident experts on female travel. Dealing with harassment can be an unfortunate reality of solo female traveling, and it’s difficult to know how to handle a tough situation once you’re in it. Laura is here to share some advice on what to do if you find yourself in an uncomfortable position. Female travelers of all ages and experience levels will encounter harassment on the road. Although it happens everywhere, harassment toward women is more common in some places than others, and you should be aware of this unflattering side of travel. No, it shouldn’t scare you or prevent you from traveling, but being prepared to deal with challenging situations will make your travels go more smoothly and help you prevent stress. Here are some situations I’ve encountered and how I dealt with them. “How many camels?” To be honest, I find the worst harassment toward females to be in the Middle East. It...

Last Updated: 10/12/20 | October 12th, 2020 Kristin Addis from Be My Travel Muse writes our regular column on solo female travel. It’s an important topic I can’t adequately cover, so I brought in an expert to share her advice for other women travelers to help cover the topics important and specific to them! She’s amazing and knowledgeable. This month, we are starting the year off with some of the common myths people have about solo female travel! Your partner thinks it would be selfish of you to travel without him/her. Your parents are worried for your safety. Your friends want to go with you but they are all busy working on their careers. The mainstream media tells you the world is a scary place for women. The little voice in your head whispers worries about loneliness to you. Does any of this sound familiar? Just like you, I had a lot of misconceptions about traveling alone before I went overseas. I thought it might be dangerous, lonely, too much work, or make people think that ...

Posted: 11/12/2014 | November 12th, 2014 On the second Wednesday of the month, Kristin Addis from Be My Travel Muse writes a column featuring tips and advice on solo female travel. It’s not a topic I can cover and, since there’s a lot of female travelers out there, I felt it was important to bring in an expert. Traveling solo can be scary, but traveling solo as a woman comes with its own particular set of concerns. This is Kristin’s column this month. If you had asked me five years ago if I would ever travel alone, I would have immediately said, “No way. That can’t be safe, it must be lonely, and I’d get so bored.” Before I started traveling, I was scared of even the idea of eating dinner alone! Then I started to realize that solo travel is not something people do just because they can’t find a friend to go with — it’s because they got tired of waiting for the perfect companion and just went. Then, as they find out there are many personal benefits to it, it typically b...

Updated: 02/03/2020 | February 3rd, 2020 This is a guest post by Laura of A Wandering Sole. Laura has been a solo female traveler for several years and has journeyed everywhere from Jordan to Namibia to Egypt. Laura will be writing a column on female travel for this site every other week. As much as I love to write, this is one topic I’m clueless about. So take it away, Laura. It’s dangerous. How will you get there? Where will you stay? By yourself? But, you’re a girl! If you’re female and have an interest in travel, then you’ve probably heard these things before. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had someone criticize my travels — where I go, how I go, or the fact that I go myself. I’m currently on a round-the-world trip, and I can assure you that solo female travel is an incredible experience and one that you should not miss out on due to fears and hesitations. Here are five reasons it’s safe to travel alone: The world is small. Even strange, foreign lands us...

Last Updated: 12/05/19 | December 5th, 2019 The issue of women’s safety in India is constantly in the news. Many women have expressed concerns about traveling there, and many more have opted not to go at all. I’ve never been to India — and I’m also not a woman — but I feel this is an important subject to discuss. Today, please welcome Candace Rardon, who spent many months traveling around India by herself, to discuss safety and solo travel in India. My introduction to India came behind the wheel of an auto-rickshaw. For two weeks in 2011, my friend Citlalli and I took part in the Rickshaw Run, driving one of India’s ubiquitous three-wheeled vehicles 2,000 miles across the country. On our fifth morning, we spent three hours wrestling our way through an 18-mile traffic jam in Bihar, a state known for its poverty and violence. After the second hour, I needed a break from dodging trucks and buses and cows, and so we pulled over. Instantly a crowd of about 20 men surrounded our r...

Last Updated: 10/12/20 | October 12th, 2020 Kristin Addis from Be My Travel Muse writes a guest column featuring tips and advice on solo female travel. It’s an important topic I can’t adequately cover, so I brought in an expert to share her advice for other solo female travelers! There are a lot of unknowns before you travel solo for the first time, like whether it’s going to be safe, how to find others to hang with, and how to choose where to go. While solo traveling is an amazing chance to be the architect of your own adventure, to see the world on your terms, and to get to know yourself, it can be scary, exhilarating, and bemusing all at the same time. As someone who has been traveling and blogging about it for the last eight years, I’ve seen all sorts of questions from first-time travelers. Many of them are the same questions I had when I first started. Today, I’m going to answer the 10 most common questions female travelers have so as to help alleviate your anxiety and ...

Updated: 8/6/20 | August 6th, 2020 Kristin Addis from Be My Travel Muse writes our regular column on solo female travel. It’s an important topic I can’t adequately cover, so I brought in an expert to share her advice for other women travelers to help cover the topics important and specific to them! This week, Kristin covers why there will always be reasons not to travel and how there will never be a perfect time to go! Life is short — we have limited time to do the things that we really want to do. It’s also a voyage — or a sack of coins that are yours alone to spend. (Those are my metaphors for life, anyway.) And it’s supposed to be fun. For a lot of people, that means not waiting until retirement to travel but rather getting out there and exploring now. If you want to travel now, but you’re scared to go it alone, you’ll be able to find excuses everywhere if you look for them. You’ll find ways to say you can’t do it right now: you’re not ready; your job, friends, or fears are holding ...

Posted: 02/20/2020 | February 20th, 2020 Kristin Addis from Be My Travel Muse writes our regular column on solo female travel. It’s an important topic I can’t adequately cover, so I brought in an expert to share her advice for other women travelers to help cover the topics important and specific to them! In this month’s article, she explores the double standards that come with solo female travel. I rushed to the gate at Julius Nyerere Airport in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. As the agent checked my passport, he looked around me and, perplexed, asked if I was alone. I’d just finished up four months of solo traveling up from South Africa, one of the best and most enriching solo trips of my life, and replied that yes, I was alone. “Your husband lets you do that?” he asked incredulously. I get it. In Tanzania, it’s unthinkable for a woman, especially in her late twenties like I was, to travel alone. I gently let him know that nobody “lets” me do anything, and that I’m unmarried. While I take pl...

Posted: 02/17/16 | February 17th, 2016 Every month, Kristin Addis from Be My Travel Muse writes a guest column featuring tips and advice on solo female travel. It’s an important topic I can’t adequately cover, so I brought in an expert to share her advice for other solo female travelers! Here she is with another amazing article! I sat with my new friends on Thanksgiving night in Tofo, Mozambique. Our food was slow to arrive, so we decided to pay homage to the nature of holiday and talk about what we were thankful for. In that moment, I couldn’t believe that I was surrounded by so many amazing people who had arrived here from various corners of the earth, all in the same way I had: by word of mouth. There were two blonde Californian girls here thanks to the Peace Corps, a clever Aussie who had just finished some of his PhD studies in a town in the north, another American who had arrived on a whim and brought all the laughs with him, and a few others from North America and Swi...