10 women travelers who broke all the rules
We’ve come a long way from the days when women were expected to have an escort if they ventured away from home, but even today women’s travel is still seen as a little transgressive. Just look at the recent surge of female solo travel memoirs, each of which grapples on some level with what it means to be a woman on the road, living life on her own terms.
But best-selling authors like Cheryl Strayed and Elizabeth Gilbert didn’t come out of a vacuum. There were generations of rule-breaking women who walked so today’s women could run – both figuratively and through airports, boarding pass in hand, carry-on roller in tow. These tenacious adventurers broke the conventions of their day, not only defying ideas about where women could and could not go, but also defying racial barriers and notions of athleticism, bravery, and endurance.
If you want to learn more about rule-breaking women who embraced travel alone and together, these ten set the bar for those who came after them. From the islands of the Caribbean to the highest mountain summits in the world, their stories just might inspire you to go further than you thought possible.
