so•lo•trav•el•less /ˈsəʊləʊˈtræv(ə)lɪs/
(noun)
1 female traveller venturing through the world on her own merits; 2 someone looking for a travel fix in a travel-less world; 3 someone excited about this solotravel-less endeavour hoping to inspire and get inspired by fellow travellers joining in on her adventures by reminiscing about the past, embracing the present, and being hopeful about the future.
ORIGIN early 21st cent.: In a time of pandemic upheaval, the final travel straw had been drawn, the solotraveller soul was broken. A platform to capture past travel gems was needed to lift the spirits, wherefore a female writer put on her travel pants and took matters into her own hands, coining this enigmatic noun.
Welcome to the World of The SoloTravelless!
This blog is all about, you might have guessed it, travel… past, present, future, whatever it may look like.
Why do we need another travel blog you might ask? Well, surely the internet does not, but I do, and hopefully eventually you do as well.
Why me and why now?
I’ve often been described as someone who lives life to its fullest, especially after leaving my hometown more than 10 years ago and working my way through the world whereby North America, Australia and the UK took up big chunks of that time. I was known for throwing myself into everything the world has to offer and embrace every challenge with a smile, something I’ve been struggling with lately.
Clearly 2020 was not ideal for such gypsy lifestyle and positive attitude, but taking a closer look, I realised that I got caught up in the daily grind much earlier than that. I pursued goals that were expected but not truly wanted, and tried to establish myself in a world I always felt was never exactly right for me. 2020 put those life choices to the ultimate test.
By closing those corporate doors on me, I was forced to reassess my life and decide what I want to do with the rest of it being now painfully confronted with our fragile nature on a daily basis. It made me reconsider my writing ambitions, something I’ve been putting off for far too long, and throughout the messy ups and downs — the pandemic rollercoaster as I like to call it — rediscover myself and the things I truly enjoy.
I realised that somewhere along the line, I lost the light-hearted and somewhat intrepid attitude making me say no to yet another UK project in 2017 and move to Australia on a whim to make use of that swiftly closing backpacker visa window.
Thinking back about that time, I remembered being terribly content living in an 8-bed hostel room for 6 months giving business improvement presentations to senior management during the week, and throwing myself out of planes or dive with sharks (only nurse sharks, don’t you worry, I’m intrepid but not silly) on the weekend, resulting in coworkers asking me about my ‘Sunday Adventures’ when returning to the office on a Monday morning.
I was living my best life out of a suitcase, no wonder a wild camping trip turned out to be the aha moment I needed to pull up those travel pants and put my actions into words for a change.
(The extended version of my ‘solotravelless’ story can be found here.)
So, what can you expect from this blog given the travel-less situation?
By sharing my past adventures, I’m hoping to bring a smile to your face, trigger some of your own travel memories and potentially inspire new ones.
At the same time, I’d like to get myself, and hopefully some of you, out there and embrace the here and now. No matter how limited it might be at the moment, there’s always some fun to be had. As mentioned above, I recently rediscovered my outdoorsy nature while learning how to wild camp, the ultimate way to take charge of your life; truly liberating, and the social distancing bit comes in rather handy, especially after your third day without a shower — wet wipes are a wonderful thing.
In addition to the fragrant present — roses, camping ‘joys’, same same — I’m hoping to keep up the excitement about our travel future. Let’s continue adding to those bucket-lists, mine could definitely do with a little top up, so I’m looking forward to your feedback, insights and recommendations in response to my reminiscent travel stories, current adventures and thoughts on future endeavours which I’m planning on sharing as well.
I’m hoping this blog will help us restless travellers, female or not, to get through this together, because as we all know, ‘Happiness is only real when shared.’*
So, come and join my journey into the wild. Let’s bring back those Sunday Adventures, and many many more!
*I wouldn’t be a proper outdoor enthusiast if I wasn’t able to sneak in a Jon Krakauer quote having explored the Alaskan wilderness myself, moose encounter and all… but I’ll save that one for another day.