The Art Of Solo Travel: A Girls’ Guide

On page 19 of Stephanie Lee’s ebook The Art Of Solo Travel, I’m suddenly faced with my age.

The days of traveller’s cheques are over.

It’s all changing, out there on the road. European currencies are being gobbled up by the Euro, making it easier and, well, duller for us all. International ATM services spit money at you directly from your bank account, no matter how geographically exotic the wall they’re set into. Increasingly powerful brands of travel insurance are there to catch you when you fall (ill/under the wheels of local transport/prey to the unscrupulous). And traveller’s cheques are on the way out. I’ve only ever filled out one wad of traveller’s cheques, in Austria in 1993. And I probably never will again. (Cheques, period? One more decade and you’re toast).

Young folk! Eeee. I remember when the Internet was all fields. Travel? Don’t make me laugh. I remember when it took 3 months just to get to the bottom of the garden, changing horses twice a fortnight and living for the last 2 weeks on fried grass and boiled shoe-leather! Those were the days. Young people, they’ve got it easy with all this “Skyping” and “Couch Surfing”. (Have you ever tried to surf on a couch? I tried it: sunk within minutes, took three hours to drag it to shore. Utter waste of time). Phones? I remember when we used flags! Oh, don’t talk to me about trains…

So that’s how I felt after reading The Art of Solo Travel.

Well okay, just a little. What I actually felt most was the urge to grab an atlas, sling it into a backpack and head out the door. It’s that kind of book – even if I’m technically the wrong sex, because  the subtitle is “A Girls’ Guide”. Regular readers may be aware that I’m not a girl. (I’m aware that some people will contest this on grounds of humour. I know who you are, guys).

New to the idea of packing a suitcase and seeing the world? Here’s what you should do with this book:

1) Read through it quickly.

2) Read bits of it slowly, Googling and reading around to get the details.

3) Read bits of it painstakingly, making lots of notes from your own research before, during and after your trip.

1) is easy. It’s a quick read. You’ll be done in half an hour, enjoying the colourful layout and the no-nonsense, cutting-to-the-chase style. And 2) and 3) are when the accumulated wisdom therein has been bouncing round your brainpan for a while, fermenting all sorts of crazy schemes.

Admittedly, I’m somewhere between 1) and 2) at the moment, so feel free to write it with cries of “what the hell do you know?” and “Get a life, you jerk!”. (Hi Mum).

So maybe you can’t trust me. Who can you trust? The author, of course – she’s walked the walk she’s now talking the talk about. Between September 2008 and April 2009, Stephanie Lee did a lap of the world (taking in 18 countries on the way) on an impressively thrifty budget of AUD $13,000, at a time when the Australian dollar was getting a right kicking. Think you could go round the globe on $10,000, or less than £7,000? Me neither. Quite the feat. And this book is her explanation of how she did it.

While I’m not giving away any of the details for obvious reasons, I will say this:

It’s unashamedly subjective. You can’t have an “objective” how-to travel book. I mistrust any books that claim to be such. We make every journey our own by tinkering with, bending or breaking the rules when it’s wise to do so. Thankfully, Stephanie makes no bones about her bias. This is what worked for her, and worked in specific places and at specific times. It may work for you, it may not – but it has worked.

It’s about attitude. Travel is tough on the mind. Sometimes you’re going to be pushed into very inhospitable corners of your psyche, and that’s just something that comes with the territory. It’s important to have that spelled out to you before you go, and what you can do about maintaining the right attitude. Kudos to Stephanie for including this, even when it’s verging on dissuading potential readers looking for something rose-tintedly breezy. There’s much honesty in here.

It’s about being single. In my experience, travelling on your own leads to a profoundly different experience than travelling with friends or loved ones. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but very different. I loved that this author is candid about the disadvantages (of which there are many) – and that being alone gave her time to discover she actually didn’t hate the job she’d fled round the world from.

It’s not about gadgets. Stephanie’s first line in the digital gizmo section is “I’m not a gadget geek” – which is fair enough. But there’s a serious omission in here. Although she mentions bewaring of places where mobile phone internet access is expensive, she also sings the praises of smartphones on the next page without mentioning call plans and roaming charges, and then follows it up with an (admittedly very sensible) recommendation for using iGoogle on a daily basis.

Connectivity fees are more important than equipment. This is worth spelling out for anyone planning long-term travel. Mobile phone handsets are not where horrible, holiday-destroying bills come from. Before you leave home you need to know exactly how much you will be paying for every local and international call, and most critically, every single megabyte you download when not using free WiFi. Moreso, make sure you know about everything your phone is downloading. Handy Windows Mobile gadget that tells you what the weather is? It’ll be getting the data from somewhere – and when you’re using GPRS or the like, it’ll be racking up roaming network charges.

Ignore this advice on a short holiday abroad, and you’ll get stung when you’ve back home. Ignore it while long-term travelling, and you’ll get shafted while you’re on the move. It’ll punch a huge hole through your rolling budget. So treat with caution, read your mobile plan carefully, check out online advice like Lifehacker’s “How To Keep Track Of Your Cellphone Data Usage“, and treat every non-Wifi connection like a ticking bomb.

It’s about all the basics. If you’ve spent the last year picking over Matador Network and Almost Fearless articles with a discerning eye and an increasingly tall stack of scribbled notes – this book isn’t for you. It’s designed to whet your appetite for all the details – not slake it.

It may give you the confidence to actually do it. And if that happens…well, this book is beyond price.

Interested? Then grab a copy for $12.95 here.

Images: Indie Travel Podcast, marcokalmann, skelekitten and Mr. T in DC.