If you’re a huge procrastinator (just like me!) then it can be easy to put of your solo travel plans until later. I’ll do it next year. I’ll go when it’s safer. But if you do this then you’ll always be waiting for the perfect moment which, more often than not, never comes! So here are my top solo female travel tips, plus links to other great tips from bloggers who have been there and done it!
Edit 25th June 2017: This post is constantly evolving as bloggers send me new great articles to share with you. If you have a post on solo female travel tips that you’d like to share, email me at thehostelgirl@outlook.com!
Solo Female Travel Tips
For Girls Who Want to Travel!
1. Stop Making Excuses
Over the last year I’ve met students, graduates, kids with no money, 50 year olds with no money, parents with kids, couples, solo travellers… guys and girls all trotting about the globe because they wanted to. If travelling more is one of your New Year Resolutions then I’m assuming you really want to.
Am I right?
Any excuse, whether it is money, confidence, family, or work related, causes you to focus on the negatives pulling you back.
Instead, stop making excuses and focus on positive changes that can push you forward.
2. Set Realistic Travel Goals
Goals, goals, goals. This may just seem like a list of things you want, but in reality writing out your goals and focusing on them at least once a day, every day, will help remind you what exactly you’re working towards and help you make important decisions based around the eventual outcome of you goals.
You can make them as realistic or unrealistic as you like. Sometimes unrealistic goals can really challenge you as an individual to achieve incredible things. While the realistic goals are there to keep you grounded and show you how each small step can open up exciting opportunities.
P.s. huge shout out to Billal from Hostel-Advisor who keeps bullying educating me on the importance of my own goals!
3. Travel Your Way
One of the biggest and most frustrating hindrances to awesome solo female travel is trying to mould your own future experience on the past experiences of others. If you’re not truly comfortable with it, you don’t have to travel solo for your first trip abroad, regardless of how many times your friends tell you how liberating it is. And so what if you follow an amazing blogger couple on twitter, but really can’t stand the thought of two months of hostel-hopping with your own boyfriend!
Whether you are travelling solo or not, travel allows you to do things your way and on your time.
Of course in groups then you’ve got to have a little bit of compromise. But constantly having to decide where to go next, where to sleep, which sights to see, and what to cook for dinner, will soon teach you to make decisions, or offer suggestions, based on how you really feel about a situation. Save being polite and patient for those queues at the train station.
Maybe you don’t even want to travel, but you think you should because everyone else is doing it! If that’s you then I highly suggest you read this piece by the incredibly honest Wandering Earl where he is almost begging us all to take a step back and figure out not what we want, but who we are and what makes us happy.
4. Be Confident
People usually get a miffed when I tell them to be confident. The usual reply is “that’s easy for you to say but you’re not shy/nervous/inexperienced/etc!”
Here’s a little secret. Rooms full of people I don’t know make me nervous and I get shy around big groups of friends. Shove me in front of another solo traveller and I’ll be chatting away like a kid on a sugar high. But throw me in to an 8-bed dorm where everyone already knows each other and it feels like I’m being thrown to the lions.
But I continue to put myself in situations that make me a more timid version of myself because they almost always lead to incredible experiences and new friends. Sure I feel like a bit of a lemon at first, and probably you do too. But after countless experiences I’ve realised that it’s a blip I need to get over in order to have the real fun.
It helps to look back over those first five or ten minutes of nervousness later when you’re giggling with everyone over a vicious game of hostel UNO, and then you can pat yourself on the back for being such a boss.
Solo Female Travel Tips By Other Bloggers
Hopefully, the first section of this post has helped a few of you reading this already! But if not, here are some more great solo female travel tips to help you kick-start your travel dreams into a reality!
For Girls In Need Of Solo Female Travel Inspiration
SHABL: Stop Having A Boring Life – this blog series by The Blonde Gypsy is awesome inspiration for solo female travel, and who better to give you inspiration than a girl who sleeps with gypsies and hangs out with monks.
How To Travel The World & Quit Your Job – Steps To Freedom – this is a no-nonsense guide to getting on the road from the Nomad Girl. She mixes practical steps in with important abstract ones, such as making travel a priority.
For Girls Who Are Worried About Safety
The Truth About Solo Female Travel and Safety – Adventurous Kate is one of the top travel bloggers out there and after years of long-term travel to ‘dangerous’ destinations she knows her stuff.
9 Tips for Solo Travel if You’re a Girl – Oneika is a female travel blogger who loves to travel solo, and here she shows you how to do it the safe way…whilst still having fun!
Travel Tips by 17 Solo Female Travellers – Yara over at Heart of Vagabond compiled tips from herself and sixteen other awesome female travellers on how they stay safe on the road. She signs off with the most important tip of all… “pack your common sense!”
Traveling the World as a Woman – these are some great solo female travel tips from Camille of This American Girl for those unsure of what to expect when heading out alone.
Globetrotting Safety Tips for Solo Female Travelers – this short guide from Bianca covers a lot of the basic solo female travel tips that women should consider when travelling alone.
For Girls Who Want To Work & Travel
42 Ways You Can Make Money and Travel the World – the clue is in the title with this one! Wandering Earl to the rescue again!
Around The World in 80 Jobs – this is an entire website dedicated to Turner’s journey working odd jobs overseas to get by as a traveller and, in his own words, “To show other people travel job opportunities abroad so that they too can give the road map the finger.”
For Girls Who Want To Be The Boss
The Suitcase Entrepreneur – a website, blog, and book
About Jodi Ettenburg | Legal Nomads – Jodi’s ‘About’ page on her hugely successful blog details all the ways in which she halted her life as a lawyer and created an income doing what she loves the most, travelling and eating exotic dishes from around the world.
For Girls Who Wants To Go It Alone
5 Reasons Why You Should Travel Alone At Least Once In Your Life – if there’s anyone who knows how to write empowering and inspiring articles it’s Jinna from Grease&Glamour! Subscribe, follow her on twitter, and travel alone at least once in your life…
On Anxiety & Travel – in this incredibly honest and open article Lauren shares her experience with panic attacks… and how she didn’t let them stop her from going it alone and travelling the world.
The Ultimate Guide to Solo Travel – a comprehensive resource page from TripBuzz that offers links to advice for solo travellers in the topics of safety, community, and planning!
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Got any other solo female travel tips?! Share them with other readers in the comments!
Lots of love…
1 comment
Great post katie! I know sole travel in not that exciting, but following your tips one certainly enjoy while traveling. Thanks so much for great information.
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