On agency and the long practice of women going alone.
A woman stands at a crossing in a city she has never seen. She sees two streets, no one to consult, and no companion to negotiate. She decides which way to turn.
Solo travel is usually sold as an aesthetic: the unplanned flight, a table at sunset photographed for a caption that begins "I did the thing." It is packaged like a trend, which is why it is easy to mistake for one. It is a practice, and it compounds.
It begins with the turn.
Every Decision Hers
Solo travel is not the absence of companionship. It is the presence of full agency: where to eat, when to linger, what to skip entirely. Curiosity goes unnegotiated. Discomfort arrives on her schedule and resolves on her terms. A feeling that settles in: understanding a menu in another language, or a transit system never used before, figured out without a guide because she trusted herself enough to try. That confidence comes home.
Attention changes too. With no one else's experience to manage, it has nowhere else to go. A morning market has a sound. Strangers make eye contact, or don't. A city has an hour before the tourists arrive. Which is why solo travel works as enrichment rather than escape: less a flight from something than a closer look at somewhere. A woman moving through a foreign place without a group framing how she is received gets the unfiltered version of a culture. The culture gets the unfiltered version of her.
The Smallest Test
The first test is often the smallest. Not the flight, or the unfamiliar neighborhood, but a host at a restaurant door asking, "Just one?" and an answer given aloud, in public. The psychologists Rebecca Ratner and Rebecca Hamilton found that people hold back from enjoyable public activities alone because they expect onlookers to judge their social lives. In their field study, people who visited an art gallery alone predicted a worse experience than those who went with someone, then enjoyed it just as much.
Somewhere between the breadbasket and the main course, it stops mattering. She notices the room, eats at her own pace, orders exactly what she wants. The table for one is where a woman decides she is enough company.
The Return
In Hostelworld's 2025 survey, 63% of first-time solo travelers said they plan to travel solo again, and nearly 78% said it boosts confidence, mental health, or both. Women make up 53% of solo bookings on the platform. The return is a recalibration: a clearer sense of what she values, what she can navigate, and what she had been making too large at home. The habit of deferring to someone else's preference loosens, and the point of view that replaces it was formed without negotiation.
The barrier is not evenly shared. Safety is the biggest obstacle for 55% of women, compared to 18% of men, and preparation becomes part of the practice: a first night reserved before landing, a city with good transit, instinct treated as information, the freedom to leave without explaining. "Be careful" has never meant "don't go."
Older Than the Hashtag
A trend has an expiry date. Solo travel was never new. Nellie Bly set out to circle the globe in November 1889 and was home in 72 days. Freya Stark was crossing Persia and southern Arabia in the 1930s. Far more women went unrecorded, by train and by ship, with no name for what they were doing. What is new is the visibility: the community, the conversation, the hashtag.
The crossing is older than all of it, and so is the decision it asks: which way to turn.
Further Reading: On Moving Through the World Alone
On places that reveal themselves to a person who is paying attention.
→ Cities That Are Beautiful to Walk Alone: Five cities best understood on foot, where attention is the only itinerary.
→ Albums That Feel Like a Foreign Country: Travel that isn't geographic, and the atmosphere a place leaves behind.
→ All Fours by Miranda July: A road trip that stops at the first motel, and the self that surfaces once the running does.