What makes women wander?
Plus an interview with Kate, solo travel aficionado
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Dear friend —
What makes women wander? What prompts them to suddenly ditch their lives as they knew it and become nomads — perhaps for a year, perhaps forever?
The answer, if you go by the bestselling memoirs written by women wanderers, is often divorce. Elizabeth’s Eat Pray Love begins in the aftermath of a split, as does Rita Golden Gelman’s Tales of a Female Nomad. The same goes for the latest book in this genre — Kate Wills’s A Trip of One's Own: Hope, heartbreak and why travelling solo could change your life. Just published in the U.K. last week, Kate’s book details the unexpected aftermath of her yearlong marriage — and the adventures she went on after it.
Must all female journeys of self-discovery begin with a man — or more accurately, the loss of one? No! Mine certainly didn’t. But there does seem to be something about relationships that keeps many women tethered more than they’d like — and something about breakups that finally give them the permission to live their best lives.
I got to chat with Kate last week about traveling solo, healing on the go, and loving life. Read on and learn! This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
So your book was published literally the same week lockdown ended in the U.K. — for the third time! Before we get into the book itself, how are things across the pond right now, and what’s it like having your first book — about travel and wanderlust, no less — come out during these crazy times?
It's a funny one because, in a way, I think people are really craving stories of travel and escapism right now. But let's face it, this is not how I imagined launching a book. When you're writing a book, you always imagine the day when it comes out where you have a launch party and that kind of thing.
So yeah, it's been different. But I feel like at least things are kind of headed in the right direction in terms of people being able to travel again. From what I've heard from people, they're really keen to get out there and start having adventures again. So in a way it's a good time.
Obviously your book is about travels that happened post-divorce. But you were a travel writer and avid solo traveler long before that.
That's right. I started going solo traveling for work, and I realized how much I enjoyed it. So then I would actively seek out these opportunities to go away by myself, which people were quite perplexed by, especially when I was married. They'd ask, didn't I have any friends to go with, as if I was like an object of pity.
I think people are more interested in the idea of solo travel since lock down. A lot of us have been cooped up with the same group of people or been alone, and we've sort of started to really cultivate our own time and our own independence. For those two reasons, I think solo travel will be a big trend when the pandemic is over.
How did splitting up change the way you traveled? Did the practical logistics change — or would you say it was mostly a mental shift?
Definitely both. I would say travel became a bit of an escape really, from feeling unhappy in my life and my marriage. I would just go on another trip and try and forget about what was happening back home. Then after my divorce, I went into this hyper travel mode where I was just traveling all the time. I went from one trip to the next trying to figure out who I was and what my life was gonna look like. When that subsided, I really realized that I had to put down roots.
In the book you go to Israel, China — a lot of far flung places. Did you ever consider moving permanently to the places you traveled to?
I've done a few stints like that. I did a study abroad year in California when I was 21. That was fantastic. Then lived in New York for a few months after that. Since then, I did a three month trip to India where I guess I was kind of trying to myself, in that way that people often make pilgrimages to that part of the world.
It's something that I'm definitely more keen on doing now, actually. There's so much more that you get from being based in a destination for a few months, rather than just traveling through for a weekend or having a two week holiday there. When you get to settle, I feel like you just know the place so much more and you're so much more immersed in it.
Do you think women let relationships hold them back from travel?
That can definitely be one of the things that holds women back from going for a lot of things that they might do by themselves. I'm not sure if it was the case for me because me and my former partner, we're both very independent and would take these solo opportunities. There can be something wonderful about that, to go off and have your own space and then come back together and share that with someone.
But I think there can be a whole host of reasons why women feel held back from trying solo travel — relationships, families. It can even just be anxiety or fears about safety, which is totally understandable.
Not to give too many spoilers, but you do end up finding new love before the end of the book, Eat Pray Love style. How long were you actually single?
I was single for about six months after my marriage kind of officially ended. When I met my new partner, things didn't get off to the best start there. It wasn’t exactly a smooth love story. So I had some good months of being totally alone. And while they were really scary at the time, now I look back on them and I'm so glad that I got to have that opportunity. Those were valuable and treasured times, because before then I had really just leapfrogged from one relationship the next.
It sounds like this brief period was the only time you were actually single in your adult life?
Pretty much. I really was just perpetually in relationships. Or if not relationships, there was always somebody I was seeing or interested in. So this time, just to be completely free and on my own was quite valuable.
One thing I wonder is if travel may have given you the opportunity to actually be alone — that that was actually a part of the appeal, even before the divorce?
Definitely. In a way they were like trial runs really for having the confidence to leave my marriage and to go it alone.
One of the things I love about your book is that it profiles a lot of adventurous women — from way back when! They bicycled around the world and wandered all over. If you could only recommend one, what travel book by another woman would you have people read?
Can I pick two? Robyn Davidson — she's the lady who tracked across the Australian Outback with camels by herself. They actually made a movie about it a couple of years ago! That book, Tracks, is just so fantastically written and evocative. What an incredible and death defying journey.
Then slightly less well-known is Emily Hahn. She is the woman who lived in Shanghai in the 1930s. She was a writer for the New Yorker and wrote many books and just had this adventurous and glamorous life. But China to Me, which is all about her experiences in China, or her memoir called No Hurry to Get Home — either of those are great reads and evocative of that period of time.
You now have a partner and new baby. What are your travel plans for 2021, if any? How do you see your wanderlust desires shifting and changing?
I'm definitely counting down the days till we can go away. I think because we haven't traveled with the baby before, we'll probably do some U.K. trips. There are some amazing places locally that we haven't discovered yet, places like Cornwall and the Lake District.
And then this idea of going somewhere and being based there for a little while, that really appeals to me with a baby too, because you do need so much more stuff and so much more planning. I think we'd like to be based in a European city for a couple of months, maybe somewhere like Berlin, just show the baby a little bit of the world. All she's seen is our little two-mile radius in London so far.
Any advice for aspiring writers?
I would say that the biggest hurdle for me, even though I'm a writer and journalist by trade, was it just felt so mammoth, starting a book. I put it off for a long time and would say I was doing research. But what I realized from writing is actually so much of your time is spent in the editing and revising part of the process — much more than with my journalism, because you have a much shorter deadline.
So I wish that I just got started sooner because what you're throwing down on the page, it doesn't have to be perfect. That's not going to be what's in the book. It's just the first step, really.
Much love to Kate for her openness to sharing her experience. A Trip of One’s Own is available now in the U.K. — and hopefully will be in the U.S. soon. Meanwhile, I’m now in Memphis, Tennessee — which seems like a fun place despite its dry state motto, “Agriculture and Commerce.” If you have travel tips, please share them!
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love:
How to write better sex: Unfuck your mind. I love this now-classic essay by Melissa Febos:
I have learned a lot from my culture, media, government, men on the streets of whatever city I’ve lived in, men whom I have loved and not loved, women whom I have loved and not loved, and even readers and fellow writers about how my body is mostly good for sex and that sex should mostly be good for men.
Why do I have to work? I’m sexy! I’ve watched this short video like 100 times and it still makes me laugh.
A case for making friends you don’t need. “One of the great paradoxes of love is that our most transcendental need is for people who, in a worldly sense, we do not need at all,” argues Arthur C. Brooks in The Atlantic.