10 women travelers who broke all the rules

Aimée Crocker

Not all the female solo travelers who captured readers’ attention during the 19th century were as mild-mannered as Ida Pfeiffer. Some were hell-raising young bohemians like Aimée Crocker, a California railroad heiress who didn’t mind shocking high society with her boy-crazy exploits, mystical visions, and international adventures that would make Indiana Jones blush.

In 1936, no longer a wild child but a doyen of women’s world travel, Crocker wrote about her youthful affairs with bullfighters, yoga, séances, tattoos, royalty, snakes, and warlords in the defiantly titled And I’d Do It Again. True to form, it’s a book that’s as much about rejecting convention and shocking delicate sensibilities as it is about the exotic destinations where Crocker found five husbands, a lifetime of stories, and herself. But Crocker walked so women like Uschi Obermaier and Kristin Newman could run.