Georgina Lawton - Black Girls Take World: The Travel Bible for Black Women with Boundless Wanderlust

SOLO BLACK FEMALE TRAVEL: THE FUTURE

For black women, solo travel is a radical act, a tool of rebellion, an allegory for emancipation.

SOLO TRAVEL is about creating opportunities on your own. Its about relying on yourself to seek out incredible adventures and make unforgettable memories that last far longer than the photos on your camera. Solo travel demands that you become your own source of joy and inspiration; it forces growth and independence. It requires you to constantly show up for, and be comfortable with, yourself.

When you travel unaccompanied or without much of a plan (in my opinion, theres no other way to do it), you quickly learn to shed layers of fear and uncertainty until the intense impetus to live life on your own terms becomes your ultimate driving force. Eventually you will find a bigger, bolder, more brilliant you at your very core. And if you do it right, this moment of inner reckoning should take place somewhere very idyllic.

Solo travel can be freeing and restorative, a chance to hit the restart button or a break to bring you back in touch with yourself. You may return home with not just a deeper understanding of a place and its people but of who you are and I know from experience how valuable that is.

At 21 years old, I left London to roam the world alone for more than a year. I had recently lost my father and a large part of my identity, and travel was the medium I chose to repair myself with. I swayed to samba in the beating heart of Rio de Janeiro, ate mouth-watering street food in Vietnam and Mexico that sated my stomach and soul, wandered around ancient metropolises built on archaic customs in Morocco and lost days and a few nights (ahem!) in fleeting romantic encounters, divided by language but united by desire. I swam with seals in the Galapagos Islands, walked with white rhinos in Zimbabwe, was sunburned in Manhattan (yeah, not sure how that one happened), got debilitating food poisoning in Nicaragua, lost a DSLR camera in the Dominican Republic and nearly got arrested in Cuba.

Spending my time (and most of my money) on an extended period of solo travel is absolutely the best decision I have ever made. It helped me glue the pieces of myself back together, inspired my writing and reminded me of my place in a vibrant global diaspora. It was also a ridiculous amount of fun!

Ive heard many black women offer protestations about why we should not travel solo, the terrible things that may happen to us, what we might lose by leaving our homes. And hey, I get the hesitation; there are times when Ive felt on edge or unwelcome on the road. But for the most part, solo travel has given me far more than it has taken away, and it has always reminded me of my power in a world that so often serves to make me, as a black woman, feel small and powerless.

For far too long, black women have been told how to live. We have been forced to exist in spaces that were not built with our comfort in mind, and as such, we have absorbed the pernicious myths about our bodies, telling ourselves, No, I cant do that or No, I dont belong here. We have been denied the authorship to our travel stories and have been turned away or told to go home when we dared to demand more from our leisure time. But what would happen if you ignored the naysayers and the stereotypes? What would happen if, instead of waiting for permission or allowing fear to dictate your decisions, you simply told yourself, Yep, its time for me to go? What would happen if you took a leap of faith and booked that damn trip, B? Im willing to bet youd have the time of your life.

Us solo females should go out there and conquer the world and not wait to be accompanied by a friend, partner or relative.

Oneika Raymond, journalist and travel blogger

For black women, solo travel holds a deep meaning thats rooted in both the political and the personal. For centuries, the movement of black bodies has been strictly controlled. But why is black female leisure so radical? Well, during the brutal period of colonial expansion, black people were forcibly removed from African and Caribbean countries and transported across the globe for the economic advancement of white European nations. Black bodies were simply a tool for capitalist production, a means to an end, and as such, our access to leisure travel was denied. Rest days werent exactly scheduled into the slavery timetable.

The movement of the black female body was (and still is) heavily policed. In times of bondage, we persevered, but we could not travel freely or for pleasure; such a concept would have directly contradicted colonial rule. And even though this period has long since ended, black women have inherited a legacy of narrow and biased assumptions about our bodies that impact us today. Neo-liberal capitalism and structural discrimination continue to burden black women more pertinently than many other groups. The systems we navigate are tainted by white supremacy and have never been designed for our self-discovery or pleasure. Opting out of this oppressive system via some well-deserved rest or leisure travel is actually pretty revolutionary. Therefore, black female travel can therefore be seen as a radical act, a tool of rebellion, an allegory for emancipation that allows us to redefine our position in the world.

To travel while black and female is to upend and overcome legacies of mobility impairment. It is to dispel myths that come from a history of restricted movement. It is to say, Boy, bye! to a lifetime of setbacks and struggles. Now that might sound like a heavy load for lil ole you to bear but Im not implying that the route to racial equality rests on your decision to visit Venice for the weekend. Just think of it as another thing to motivate you to book your trip.

Of course, in the age of the coronavirus, solo travel looks a littledifferent. You may be feeling more comfortable in your solitude, and the idea of travelling alone seems a little more appealing. Or perhaps youre so over working from home (I feel ya) and have realised that a digital nomad life is well within your reach now that your office has gone remote and freedom of location is no longer restricted to just freelancers. But if youve weighed up the risks and decided that travel is wholly necessary, now might actually be the best time to embark on that epic solo journey because things are cheaper and quieter and youre going to be socially distancing from others anyway, meaning youll get a taste of true solitude.

Coronavirus is making us all rethink the purpose and pleasure behind solo travel. Psychologically, theres a shift in how we view people. Where the solo traveller once revelled in serendipitous moments with strangers, they must now limit their spontaneous interactions with them. Where we once saw others as potential friends, we must now think of them as potential virus carriers. Last-minute bookings have been replaced with meticulous research around location-specific safety precautions. Extreme planning is suddenly vital for safety oh, and festivals, finger food and mask-free travel are now a distant myth from a time gone by!

In the world of travel, things have irrevocably changed. And while global tourism wont completely rebound for some time, there are travel deals aplenty to entice us to start exploring safely. Road-tripping at home is taking off, while popular tourist spots are once again unspoilt. On a trip to Lisbon in 2020, I snagged a bargain flight from the UK then found that the usual extra charges for one-person bookings on my walking tour had been scrapped.