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To be a wayward woman

 

People often are shocked that I travel alone. “What do you do at meals?” they ask. I eat and watch people. It is not difficult.

Women have been travelling alone for centuries. Ida Pfeiffer is one of my favourite Victorian era travellers. She was a widow whose children had grown and, in 1852, she set out for the Holy Land. She was robbed and cheated but came home exhilarated. She tells of crossing the Nile to visit the Pyramids. Two large powerful men stood side by side; I mounted on their shoulders, and was held fast by their heads, while they supported my feet in an horizontal position above the waters, which at some places reached almost to their armpits, so that I feared every moment that I should sit in the water.

On her return to Germany, Ida couldn’t settle back into her old life. She sold her belongings and set off around the world, financing her trips by writing of her adventures.

Another woman traveller I admire is Isabella Bird. She shed the role of family spinster after her elderly parents died. Then she headed towards Persia, the Himalayas, China, Japan and North America. Her travel stories can be downloaded free from Google, and she describes people so well. On a trip through China, she was carried by sedan chair. My bearers trudged along at an even pace, stopping two or three times for a drink or a smoke… I sat in my chair in the village street, the unwilling centre of a large and very dirty crowd, which had leisure to stand around me for an hour, staring, making remarks, laughing at my peculiarities, pressing closer and closer till there was hardily air to breathe, taking the hairpins, passing my gloves around and putting them on their dirty hands.

Helen Caddick, a wealthy woman from Birmingham, travelled in the 1880s to southern Africa. While there she decided to journey up the Zambesi River to the Great Lakes of what is now Malawi. She was warned that women didn’t travel this route alone. However, Miss Caddick hired 16 local men to carry her and her luggage, plus a translator who had learned English at a mission station. When summoned, he would proclaim, “Behold, I am come!” She was immensely adventurous, even after a visit to her camp kitchen. “The cook held a plucked fowl with one hand and was beating it with the other – black – to make it tender. As I wished to be able to eat my dinner, I never went on a tour of inspection again.”

These women set off into the unknown before there were guidebooks or mobile phones. They cast warnings of danger aside. A compilation of more than 400 women travellers is documented in one of my favourite books, Wayward Women, A Guide to Women Travellers. When I feel life is growing a little dull, I read a few pages and gain a stirring to pack a bag and set off on a journey.

Eating alone is worth it.

Isabella Bird



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