Favorite Books by Women Who Travel Solo

While writing a memoir about her travels alone in Costa Rica and Europe, Julie Hammonds read many books by women who had gone adventuring on their own and written about the journey. Their courage, good humor and insights about the solo road inspired her writing. Here are a few favorite quotes on the loneliness, delight, purpose, spirit and challenges of soloing. For those who want to read more tales of adventurous women, the reading list at the right will get you started.

A Few Favorite Quotes

I was living in Southeast Alaska when I read “The Way Winter Comes,” a collection of essays by Sherry Simpson. The gift of a good book, its ability to bridge the gap between two minds, was clearly illustrated when I read her essay “On the Island of Desire” about a solo journey to nearby Lincoln Island. I made two of my own solo journeys there.

“Being by yourself for days at a time creates its own kind of wilderness, a place where no one else passes through. The hours slide by, and the days and the nights slide by, and because no one else is there, you’ll suddenly speak out loud, just to hear yourself say: I’m alone.”

After hearing a reading by Audrey Sutherland, who swam and kayaked solo along the coast of Molokai, Hawaii, I had to read her delightful book, “Paddling my own Canoe.”

“There is a sensuous joy in being alone – delight in the simple animal pleasure of blowing my nose with one knuckle, peeing in the moonlight, and trying a Tahitian dance step with only myself to snicker. There is a smug ironic satisfaction in finding an ingenious solution to a problem which was caused by my own inadequacy or stupidity.
Men and women are more alike than different. Women too need to feel the coyote wildness, the pleasure of muscles moving in coordination, the sweat and the weariness, and the uncertainty of what the end of the effort will be.”

Kira Salak is an amazing traveler who richly deserves her selection as one of five people in the world to receive a 2005 National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer Award. “Four Corners” is her story of a solo journey to Papua New Guinea while in her early twenties.

“'I highly recommend you get yourself a group to travel with. Or at least a male companion.'
I’ve heard this before. I first heard it when I was nineteen and backpacking around Egypt by myself. And I’d heard it just the other day, during my stopover in Cairns, where several people offered their own versions of Papua New Guinea’s notorious violence, followed by the advice: too dangerous, don’t go by yourself. Which is why I’m going. By myself. The only rule I try to follow religiously in life is not to listen to most people.”

In “Riding with Ghosts,” Gwen Maka  recounts her solo bicycle trip from Seattle, Washington, to Panama.

“I believe that travelling alone has the potential to bring out the mystical in us, to sensitize us to the subtle and enable us to hear the silence which is normally blasted out by modern conveniences, or by the chatter of voices.” (spelling is British)

“Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica” was written by Sara Wheeler, who share tales from six months spent traveling in Antarctica.

“I had never understood the appeal of remaining within earshot of the tinkling bells of the parish church – campanilismo, they call it in Italy. Traveling gave me and all the other compulsive travelers a new identity away from that place called home; at least, ostensibly it did. As everyone who has done it has discovered, and as many writers have written since Horace (though no one has ever done it better than he), Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currant – You can run away as far as you like but you’ll never get away from yourself. This was no reason to stop, even if it could be disappointing to find oneself lurking in the depths of the TaklimakanDesert after all the effort it took to get there. For me, it meant I was still trying. That was how I saw it.”

Thank you for visiting! Enjoy the journey.

A Reading List

• “Canyon Solitude,” Patricia McCairen.
• “Deep Water Passage,” Ann Linnea.
• “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert.
• “East Toward Dawn: A Woman’s Solo Journey Around the World,” Nan Watkins.
• “Great Lakes Solo,” aka “The Fourth Coast,” Mary Blocksma.
• “Journey Across Tibet: A Young Woman’s Trek Across the Rooftop of the World,” Sorrel Wilby.
• “Learning to Float: The Journey of a Woman, a Dog, and Just Enough Men,” Lili Wright.
• “Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone,” Mary Morris.
• “Rowing to Latitude,” Jill Fredston.
• “Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World,” Rita Golden Gelman.
• “Tracks,” Robyn Davidson.
• "Without Reservations: Travels of an Independent Woman," Alice Steinbach.
• "On the Island of Desire" from "The Way Winter Comes," Sherry Simpson.
• "Paddling my Own Canoe," Audrey Sutherland.
• "Four Corners," Kira Salak.
• "Riding with Ghosts," Gwen Maka.
• "Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica," Sara Wheeler.