Fight the Fear: Travel Solo

As someone who’s done some solo travelling, I’ve been wanting to write about the murder of backpacker Grace Millane in New Zealand. I’ve been busy with exams, but I was figuring the words out in the back of my mind.

But then a few days ago I read about Sarah Papenheim, an American studying in the Netherlands who was stabbed to death by her male flatmate, and something in me just snapped.

I didn’t know what to say any more. I’ve just been so incredibly angry. It's taken time to gather my thoughts.

Two young women, 22 and 21, killed by two young men. Both thousands of miles from home, from their families. Both having the time of their lives, experiencing another country. Both in countries I personally would think of as being super safe.

Are people reading these stories and wondering what a young woman was doing travelling all alone? Meeting up with a stranger? Will they wonder how safe it is to travel themselves? Or to study abroad? Will it scare parents off letting their children go off on their own adventures?

Please, don’t let it. Women do not need any more reasons to watch the way we live. The violence is not our fault; that is entirely on the perpetrators. We are not the ones who need to change.

There are too many reasons to travel for us to just stop out of fear. Being alone in a foreign country is exciting and lonely and wonderful and empowering and boring and beautiful.

Travelling and living abroad has taught me a lot about the world, and people, and myself. And I’ve experienced so much kindness from strangers along the way. I think it’s important to remember that.

Right now I want to focus on the goodness. I can be absolutely livid and devastated that those men chose to take the lives of two innocent women, but I can also be positive about travelling in general. Grace Millane’s family have said they don’t want a single person to be put off travelling because of her death. So here are some of the people I’ve met on my travels.

The girl in Frankfurt who saw me crying after I missed my bus to the airport, and helped me find another. She promised me a place to stay if I didn’t make my flight.

The girl on that second bus, who accompanied me into the airport to do all the talking in German and make sure I’d be allowed to fly (and who also offered me a bed for the night if it didn’t work).

The man in Melbourne who noticed I was lost because I’d walked past him in a panic 3 times, and walked with me to my destination to be sure I didn’t lose my way again.

The man in Singapore who saw me, flustered and upset, trying to drag a suitcase with a broken wheel down the street in the dark on my first night, and carried it to my hostel for me.

My Couchsurfing hosts in London who put me up and cooked wonderful food for me, and gave me advice for getting the most out of the city.

My Couchsurfing host in Thailand, a gentle psychology student who brought me into her home, took care of me like a sister for three days and introduced me to her beautiful country.

The elderly Thai man on Koh Tao island, who spotted me walking from the beach as it was getting dark and gave me a lift right back to the main road on his motorbike.

The fellow tourists and hostel staff on Koh Tao who picked me up off the road after I fell off a bicycle. And then the wonderful nurses at the clinic who held my hands while I got stitched up, and helped me every step of the way with my recovery and the insurance process.

The sweet woman in Kuala Lumpur who approached me just to check if I needed help, because I’d wandered a long way from the tourist areas and probably looked more lost than I was.

There were times in all this that I could really have met disaster. That man who knew where my hostel was could have had bad intentions. My hosts might have let me down at the last minute and left me with nowhere to go. The girls in Frankfurt didn’t have to stop for a crying stranger – they had their own plans to be getting on with. All that’s really gone badly wrong for me is falling off the bike, and that accident could have happened anywhere (if you’re bad enough at cycling, you could easily recreate it outside your own front door).

Have I been naive? Too trusting? Too vulnerable? Maybe. Am I going to stop? No. Why would I?

I have faith in my instincts, and I have faith in humanity. I believe most people are good and want to help. In my time abroad I’ve almost exclusively met people who treated me kindly. Does that make me fortunate? I don’t think so. “Kind” should be our default setting.

We do need to have conversations about the sickening violence happening against women, and we need to be angry. But in memory of the adventurous young women whose lives were taken recently, I think it’s important to retain our sense of adventure and trust and curiosity about the world. We can’t let that be taken from us too.

(First two images from bbc.com and thetimes.co.uk)