10 women travelers who broke all the rules

Isabella Bird

The first ever woman to be admitted to the Royal Geographical Society, Isabella Bird was one of the best-known female solo travelers of her day. She rode horseback through Hawaii (then called the Sandwich Islands) and the Rocky Mountains – the latter was still brand-new and exotic even to many Americans.

Her accounts of traveling through Estes Park – not yet the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, which wouldn’t be designated for another 42 years – as well as parts of Colorado and Wyoming captivated audiences, though she faced harsh winter weather, rough terrain, and rougher characters. Someone Bird called “Rocky Mountain Jim” sounds like a character straight from a Western romance when she described the one-eyed outlaw as “a man any woman might love but no sane woman would marry.”

Though she briefly married a Scottish doctor after moving on from Jim, he died just a few years later. As a widow, Bird continued traveling – and writing about her adventures – for the rest of her life. Her peregrinations included long stints in China, Tibet, India, Iran, and Turkey, as well as Korea and Morocco. When Bird died in 1904, she was in the midst of planning a return to Asia, indefatigable as always.