Recently a new friend asked me to share my experiences of solo traveling and asked if I have any sort of conscientious check-list for someone headed for her first solo-trip.
What followed was a wonderful conversation between two people who although were speaking for the first time seemed strangely connected and at ease with each other. She had a lot to say, to seek, to understand and to absorb. I could hear her excitement and her anxiety. She asked me many things over multiple times about how did I manage to travel alone. Why and how did my family and more surprisingly my husband allow. She was puzzled with how is it so okay with mine while it is so questionable with hers. Her confusion was apparent with the differences in outlook over similar situations. And as we kept talking it became strikingly blatant that the hesitations were more hers than of the people who care for her. It was her who was questioning me. I was taken aback.
Despite it being a very busy week post our conversation, my mind kept going back to our conversation, to her. Her expectations, her apprehensions and her fear. It felt known. Like I have been through many such conversations earlier and I could resonate with her. Her thoughts echoed the thoughts of many other men and women that I have interacted with over the course of last few years. The thoughts were of that aspirational yet scared girl who unknowingly has been kindled to a certain regulated way of living. A glorified living with all the luxuries but with limitations. These limitations are not out rightly regressive or old-school but are yet evidently woven in an otherwise liberal society. I believe that there is a lot of notional freedom extended to women but in parallel there are equal number of radical naysayers clouded with their restrictions. Honestly, I do not blame them.
I started my solo excursions in 2015 and a lot has changed in the past so many years. Technology alone is a gifted truth and then there are other elements of growth and overall development, case in point mobile network improvements or language accessibility. But having said that there remains the horrific fact of crime against women which never seems to subside in this country. How could you then really blame the naysayers? Most of them reprimand as they care, as there is very little that they can do otherwise. They feel comforted by controlling what they can control.
Then again to think of it, things are not exactly identical across the country with us. While we know the obvious differences of culture and lifestyles between the archetypal metros and the queer smaller towns, I believe there are notable differences as we move from one region to the other even in a single state. Certain communities have harder inhibitions and as one moves across the nation’s length and breath of various domestic backgrounds and each family carries its own unique set of beliefs of what a woman can or cannot do. Some borders around if a woman can and must live alone and there are yet others which questions if a woman can adopt a child alone. We may have come a far away ahead from the archaic girl child education or widow re-marriage but we are still far away behind addressing the basic understanding that what a woman can or cannot is her choice. It is as simple.
At the same time I also feel that the things are changing gradually. 2022 India is a much brighter place for women. Everyday is a tiny improvement to the previous days. We now have women entrepreneurs lighting up the business landscape and there and iconic ladies charting their path into unknown and formerly forbidden territories. Likewise, there are more women traveling solo to unknown destinations now as compared to how it was about a decade ago. I can witness much lesser raised eyebrows now. Lesser people asking the eternal question of, “how does your family permit you?” or “are you not scared?”. This is an anticipated change that we knew future would present and we know as we move ahead there will be more and more things that will be different. I know it will be.
So she and I spoke and we exchanged some notes on the do’s and don’ts and things we need to be responsible and disciplined about in our solo adventures. This so far looks very promising, with her assuring that she will that ultimate leap of faith and make her first trip and with me promising that I will be there anytime she needs me. From one seasoned woman solo traveler to the other ambitious woman solo traveler. From one woman who has defied the conventional society and silently lobbied against it to one who has been a product of the traditionalists confounded by the hypocrisy.
Some have changed, some more are waiting to get changed.
