Hello wonderful people! It has been a long time since I last posted but I finished my finals last week so I am free before my last semester of grad school begins, in February. As some of you may know, I recently led a discussion about traveling solo as a woman at the University of Minnesota. In this discussion I shared personal experiences as a solo traveler and created a document with different tips and tricks about safety, packing, travel tours and deals. I figured I could share the list on my blog, so here it is. Enjoy! (P.S. stay tuned for another post about my solo traveling experience).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Tips and Tricks on Traveling:
Girls Love Travel (GLT): Global community using social media for good and connecting active and aspiring women travelers living in over 100 countries around the world! “Girls LOVE Travel (GLT) is a global community of both active and aspiring women travelers providing resources and empowerment to one another through safety, socializing and support. Founded by Haley Woods in December of 2015, Girls LOVE Travel welcomes any individual who identifies as female/femme/womxn, non-binary, trans, genderqueer, agender, or any combination of the above! The GLT community is open to non-traditional gender identities.” Often used for asking travel tips, recommendations on places to go, advice on flight deals, sharing stories and photos!
On She Goes: “A digital travel platform that helps women of color travel more confidently, more adventurously, and more often." They also have a podcast centered on the experiences of women of color where they discuss the travel industry, culture, and the world.
Black Girls Travel Too: “Encouraging women of color to leave their backyards and live through travel. Black Girls Travel Too curates travel experiences with the intent on stretching, growing, and enriching women through travel. What started as an Instagram Account in January of 2015, has now become a black travel movement that has changed the lives of hundreds of women. Doing more of the possible one global experience at a time.”
Thrifty Traveler: “This site primarily deals with travel, but there are so many other ways to save money. Thrifty Traveler will also include tips such as the best way to save on an engagement ring, cut your cable bill, reduce student debt, lower the cost of your phone bill, or even save on new appliances. The goal of Thrifty Travelers is to help readers save more of their paychecks, allowing them to travel more. If you love to travel and save some coins, then Thrifty Traveler is an informative resource to start with!”
Read about solo traveling experiences:
Adventurous. Alone. Attacked: “Violence against female tourists was a thread in the broader fabric of violence against women around the world… The root cause of this kind of violence against women in communities and in public and private spaces has a lot of do with the underlying gender stereotypes, social norms, entitlement and patriarchy,” Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
7 Women Share Their Best and Worst Solo Female Travel Experiences
Female Solo Travel: What it’s like to travel solo in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s
Packing for Your Trip:
Budgeting for Your Trip:
Women on the Road: Travel Budget: Travel can be expensive - but there are ways to bring costs down, check this site to learn more.
All Women Travel Tours:
Adventures in Good Company: This tour specializes in expeditions in the U.S., like dog-sledding and snowshoeing on the shores of Lake Superior (from $1,765 for five days).
Adventure Women: AdventureWomen is a relationship company, empowering women to build new connections with other women and discover more about themselves through travel. Books luxe trips, most lasting at least a week, to 26 destinations — like hiking, biking, and whitewater rafting in Colombia (from $4,590 for 10 days).
Balanced Rock: This tour focuses on the transformational power of nature to inspire deep connection with your own inner wisdom.The nonprofit's yearly Women of Color Wilderness Retreats in Yosemite combine survival-skill building, yoga, and mindfulness exercises (from $595 for four days).
Damesly: Damesly is a woman-owned boutique tour company offering women-only adventures, workshops, + self-discovery trips. Each tour is packed with full + exciting itineraries, designed for creative and professional women to experience the world while making new friendships.Hosts self-discovery workshops in Arizona (from $1,850 for three days), Hawaii, and Iceland.
Explorer Chick: The mission for Explorer Chick is simple: IMPACT. There’s magic in traveling with friends and strangers to new parts of the world experiencing challenging adventures and unfamiliar cultures that leaves a lasting, permanent footprint on the heart, soul, and mind. The company arranges backpacking trips in the American West and Appalachia, including a trek in the Great Smoky Mountains (from $699 for four days).
Fit & Fly Girl: Fit & Fly was formed out of a desire to bring women together, combining travel with the pursuit of a balanced and healthy lifestyle. Daily workouts anchor retreats to party-friendly locales like Ibiza, Spain (from $2,300 for seven days).
FP Escapes: FP Escapes are unique, value driven bespoke wellness retreats curated by Free People featuring leading experts in wellness, travel, and creativity. Crafted to restore like a yoga retreat and enlighten like an exotic getaway, these unique vacation packages offer a departure from daily demands on mind and body. The clothing brand's itineraries in places like Nicaragua's Playa Maderas (from $1,600 for seven days) emphasize mind-body connection.
REI Women's Adventures: The outdoor-gear co-op leads ambitious expeditions, like a South Africa safari (from $7,399 for 11 days), and three-day Outessa retreats in California, Oregon, and New Hampshire (each from $799).
WHOA Travel: Their mission is to create life changing adventure experiences that bring women together. Take them out of their comfort zones, and leave them and the world changed forever. Besides Kilimanjaro (from $3,450 for seven days), destinations include Bavaria, Peru, Nepal, Russia, and India.
Wild Women Expeditions: This tour uses a shared leadership approach to educate on facilitation and skill development. They leads intimate journeys, like a horseback ride across Mongolia (from $2,995 for 14 days), designed to foster inclusivity.
Trans/Non Binary Travelers - Questions and Concerns:
LGBTI Travelers: “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) travelers can face unique challenges when traveling abroad. Laws and attitudes in some countries may affect safety and ease of travel. Legal protections vary from country to country. Many countries do not legally recognize same-sex marriage. More than seventy countries consider consensual same-sex sexual relations a crime, sometimes carrying severe punishment.”
Outright Action International: “Recognizing that social norms requiring conformity to gender roles underlie many discriminatory practices, Outright Action International work‘s with local partners to push for laws and policies that protect gender identity and expression, and hold governments accountable for their enforcement.”
Trans Legal Mapping Report: “Trans Legal Mapping Report draws attention to how laws in different countries recognise the rights of trans people to change their identity markers on official documents.”
Airport Security - Know Your Rights: “This guide answers common questions trans people may have about airport security procedures and outlines steps individuals can take to prevent and respond to problems at the airport.”
Transrespect: “This ongoing, comparative qualitative-quantitative research is first and foremost grounded in, and serves gender-diverse/trans people’s movements and activism. The project seeks to provide an overview of the human-rights situation of trans and gender-diverse persons in different parts of the world and to develop useful data and advocacy tools for international institutions, human-rights organizations, the trans movement, and the general public.”
Resources at the University of Minnesota:
Learning Abroad Center at the UofM: The Learning Abroad Center creates meaningful educational opportunities abroad for students through ethical and innovative engagement within the University of Minnesota and the greater education abroad community.
Learning Abroad Center Scholarships: There are many scholarships available specifically for students planning to study abroad. You can also use most general scholarships to fund your study abroad experience. In many cases, you do not need to have applied for your study abroad program to be eligible to apply for study abroad scholarships. Start researching scholarship opportunities early so you don't miss any application deadlines.
Get Ready to Go Abroad: Having all the information you need for traveling abroad is important. Check out the Learning Abroad Center’s handy resource pages to learn what you need to know before leaving for your experience abroad. This guide includes information about documents and ID’s, finances, technology abroad, immigration and customs and so much more.
Safety:
Trip Whistle: There are 196 countries in the world with more than 70 different emergency numbers. Know the right number and get help faster with TripWhistle!
A list of must-have apps for safety: “When traveling, your phone can be a source of many things. It can help you stay connected to friends and family members back home — and new friends you meet on the road— and it can keep you from getting lost. While you may want to disconnect completely while on vacation, having a data roaming plan is important, so you at least have the option to access useful apps that translate languages, convert currencies, help you navigate a new city and organize your travel plans. Check this list of apps that are practical and make your traveling easier and safe.”
Z Link to Resource Guide: https://z.umn.edu/solotravelasawoman
Thanks for reading! If you have other tips or sources that can be added, let me know.
Style. Sass. Spirit.
Keetha, Lately
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