“Aren’t you worried about travelling all alone?”. The answer is: not really, actually. Before booking my first solo travel, I worried about safety, particularly as a female. There were so many conflicting sources on whether it was safe to travel solo as a female. And I imagined being kidnapped and sold into a prostitution ring like in the movie Taken. Oh, how naïve I was.
But in all seriousness, I keep safety at the back of my mind, particularly as a female who tends to go off the beaten track. I don’t let it consume me, but I am always wary. Over the years, I have picked up a few tips and tricks to ensure I travel safely without tainting my travels with worry.
Tip 1: Know where you are going
Sometimes it is fun to get a little lost. However, when I arrive in a new city, country or town, I always know where my hostel is. Before I leave the previous destination where I have access to Wi-Fi, I pin the location of my hostel on Google Maps. Depending on the country, sometimes I write down the address on paper to hand to a driver.
Also super helpful, most hostels on Hostelworld have a “getting here” section. This has instructions on how to get to the hostel via taxi, bus, or train, with specific instructions on which bus number to catch. While walking around a city with your backpack feels like a rite of passage for backpackers, it also makes you an easily identifiable target for robbers. Try to take the most direct route to your hostel to drop off your bags, and then you can walk around and explore the city unencumbered by luggage.
If you are getting into a taxi/Uber and have the location pinned, you can ensure the driver is heading in the right direction and not taking you to the middle of nowhere. On my last trip to Indonesia, I met someone who haggled down the price of a taxi from the airport, only to have the driver drive him to the middle of nowhere and demand quadruple the agreed price. When the traveller said no, the driver was aggressive and threatening, kicking the guy out in the middle of nowhere with his bags.
While this is not a common occurrence, and arguably, once the traveller was in the taxi with his luggage, there was not much he could do escape-wise. It still is reassuring to know that your driver is taking you in the right direction. And hey, if the traveller had called the driver out about him heading the wrong direction earlier in the trip, maybe he would have at least been dumped in an urban area with many people around, as opposed to 30 minutes in the wrong direction from his hostel. Luckily the guy got to his hostel relatively unscathed, but the situation could have ended up much worse.
Tip 2: Your life is more important than your belongings
This may sound like common sense, but if someone jumps out at you in a dark alley brandishing a knife and says, “Give me your phone”, you give them the phone. In certain places, muggers prey on travellers, and robberies are sadly common. While losing your phone, wallet, or camera is unfortunate, nothing is more important than your health and physical safety. You can always buy a new phone (and you may even be able to claim it on travel insurance). But getting stabbed with a dirty knife in a foreign country and potentially dying for refusing to hand over your phone.. yeah, not a vibe. Your physical safety should always be the priority when you travel solo.
Tip 3: Trust your gut
If a situation seems dodgy, trust your gut. Whether it is walking through a dimly lit alleyway or a man you think may be following you. I’ve had a few instances where I’ve thought, “is this guy following me, or are we just walking the same way”. So I ducked into a shop and waited a few minutes. Every time the man walked on, utterly oblivious to my presence, while I was waiting for him to pass. That being said, sometimes a situation can be much more sinister.
Don’t be afraid to call for help or tell a local you feel unsafe. Google Translate’s offline feature is a lifesaver if you ever need the help of a local who doesn’t speak the same language as you. While you don’t want to see danger in everything corner, it is important to understand your surroundings and assess safety levels when you travel solo.
Tip 4: Try to blend in
Often, it won’t be possible to fully blend in with the locals when travelling. But trying to blend in and not stick out certainly feels safer and can avoid unwanted staring. While the staring may not be malicious and may just be natural curiosity, it can feel unsettling and make you question how safe you when you travel as a solo female. In highly conservative countries, wearing ankle-length skirts and tops that cover shoulders/ cleavage can help you blend in more.
Not wearing expensive brand-name clothing and jewellery will make you less of a target for would-be robbers. It’s not very aesthetic, but it will lessen your chances if you’re concerned about being robbed. I’ve only been robbed once (a bikini top from a hostel, so it’s not a big deal). But I also dress pretty daggily most of the time. I’ve had friends who have had their new brand-name sandals stolen from beach bars while dancing barefoot, and nobody touched my dingy-looking shoes just next to theirs.
Tip 5: Research the place you are travelling to
I don’t subscribe to the notion that there are “unsafe” or “safe” places to travel to as a solo female. Having travelled to many places that mainstream media deem “unsafe”, I think it is all about perception and negative stereotypes about specific countries.
That being said, I always research where I’m going and have an idea of any obstacles that may be unique to this country. For example, in some places, there is a high risk of mugging, mainly if walking around at night by yourself in the city. If I’m aware of this in advance, I always have in the back of my mind that I will need to rely on Uber to get around at night. In other countries, there may be restrictions/ strict social norms on how women dress. Therefore, covering up knees and shoulders may be wise to avoid unnecessary attention.
Tip 6: It’s all about mindset
Bit of a hot take here, but I do agree that, to an extent, safety is subjective. Many travellers feel unsafe in certain places, not because there are real and present threats to their security, but because they perceive a place as dangerous. This is often due to negative stereotypes about this place. But also social conditioning that equates anything “foreign” or “different” to being unsafe. I’ve fallen victim to this, where I told myself that travelling to South America was not safe to travel as a solo female backpacker. I ended up backpacking around South America and had a fantastic time. There were very few times when I felt even remotely unsafe. Most of those times were because I was worried about getting mugged/ pickpocketed in a big city (as opposed to being murdered/ kidnapped by those infamous drug dealers the media creates a moral panic about).
Crime does happen everywhere in the world, including in your home country. Are you driving around your hometown worried about getting into a car accident and dying? Probably not. And yet motor-vehicle accidents are one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide. If you spend your whole trip paranoid about safety, you’re probably not going to have the best time. Next time you fret about safety when you travel solo, think about the likelihood of anything untoward happening. Think about all the solo travellers (and female solo travellers) who had backpacked this destination before you and lived to tell the tale.
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