When it comes to wanderlust, women seem more keen to grab their passports and follow it. Women travel more often than their male peers, making up 56% of leisure travelers, according to travel media brand AFAR . And increasingly, those trips are solo trips , with nary a spouse, friend or family member in sight.
But traveling alone, especially as a woman, can be intimidating. Seventy percent of women worry about their personal safety while traveling alone, according to a recent poll from the popular travel site Solo Female Travelers . Those concerns are heightened for women who are minorities.
If you’re a queer woman, for instance, you might wonder how likely you are to get weird stares or harassed, especially if you’re with your partner. When you visit a location that makes you feel safe, you want to share it, not gatekeep it. With that in mind, we asked travel writers to share the international travel destinations that made them feel extra safe as women solo travelers.
See what they had to say below. (And, of course, still make sure you do your own research about the safety of places you want to travel to — whether they’re mentioned here or not.) "When you trust yourself and have faith in others, safety becomes less destination-specific and more about being aware of where you are and the potential risks," said travel writer Carolyn Ray, pictured here in Ecuador.
“As an older woman, one country I loved traveling on my own to is Ecuador. I stayed in small towns in bot.