On International Women’s Day, Savaari celebrates women who dare.
Women who take on life on their own terms, who defy all odds to do what they love and who inspire us in so many ways to pick up our bags and head out on our dream vacations.
Women who brave the night, women who dream endlessly, women who let their hair down, women who live life on the edge, women who never give up, women who tell stories and women who travel the world.
We didn’t have to look far to find inspiration in these women. They’re all around us. We just looked up and found women who dare.
“Travelling alone as an adult helped me get out of my comfort zone and enabled me to depend on no one but myself. It has prepared me to be self-reliant, be smarter about choices I make, made me increasingly independent, and taught me to have fun and spread joy wherever I go. Travelling alone as a woman has both its upsides and downsides – there will be people trying to take advantage of you and you always have to keep your eyes peeled for any behaviour/people that makes you uncomfortable. Always go with your gut instinct. It’s usually right. There will also be people who will be kind and help you no matter what your situation (trust me, I lost my passport while I was alone in Germany).
There’s always something I’ve learned when I’ve travelled. Sometimes it’s from a city’s history & rich culture and sometimes the story behind a monumental landmark. Sometimes even from the guy I met at a flea market who took me to an unexplored local graffiti scene, and group karaoke at a student bar. Being a budget traveller, I’ve always picked hostels to stay not just to save money, but to meet travellers from other countries, go on pub crawls and city tours together, listen to their stories, and always learn something from them. My travel stories have been filled with enriching and enlightening experiences, and I want to travel to at least one new city/country a year so that I never stop learning.”
Pro Tip: Always take down the embassy details of any country that you’re visiting. It will be of massive help if you are stuck in any unfortunate situation abroad.
“Travelling alone has personally never been an issue for me at all. If you travel to remote places outside metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and so on, it’s not a problem. I’ve travelled alone in the pre-cellphone days, and I have a lot of good stories from my journeys.
That being said, I do take my precautions. And I think that if you’re not comfortable with a situation, you should get out as quickly as possible. Don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable, and choose a protected place to stay if you’re travelling alone.
A lot of women have inspired me to travel. I had the chance to meet and interview Paula Constant who walked the Sahara Desert all by herself! Here’s the full interview: http://www.inditales.com/walking-sahara-desert-paula-constant/“
Gauri Jayaram is a travel writer and entrepreneur. She quit her high-paying job to start an outbound adventure firm called The Active Holidays Company. In Gauri’s own words, “I have visited 108 cities in 35 countries, travelled 1,83,170 miles and still covered just 19% of the world! That should explain it all – the glass is not 19% full; it is 81% empty! And, I am thirsty – very thirsty! The only problem is that its taken 50% of my life to travel just 19% of mother earth. Now, considering that I have only 40 more years left, statistically it looks like I have to pack in a LOT in the next few years!”
Gauri found her love for running marathons at a very unexpected place – an airport where she nearly missed a flight! As someone who has her hands full with running a start-up, running the marathon and running to her next travel destination, Gauri is full of great memories doing all the things she loves.
“On my last trek to Annapurna (which was a girls only trek) all of us jumped on top of a bus cos it was full. Unplanned and the best part of our trip! Our guide was horrified. We asked him how many of his groups had done something like this before – he responded that we were the first!! This is exactly the sort of thing that makes memories,” she says.
“It was a while back in 2005 when I created my first website on Bihar purely out of interest. As that site grew in popularity, I decided to create a community site and called it YouBihar. Today, it has become the biggest Bihar social networking site with over 12,000 members and counting.
I am an Indian housewife with children. I do a lot of outdoors activities, site seeing, travelling to places in India and around the world. Now when I have time, I write about India and travelling to India. I’ve written books on how to travel in India, a survival guide for women travelling here and even a Hindi phrase book for foreigners travelling to India.
India is a great place to be going on vacation but some of the public toilets India has to offer will take the excitement out of your holiday. The toilets in good hotels will be western styled toilets but when you are out and about then chances are that you will encounter some Indian styled toilets. And using public toilets is a tough job. There are plenty of devices now that allow women use a bathroom while standing up. Trust me it’s going to be a life saver for your travels to India.”
