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Have you ever heard yourself saying, ‘I’d love to travel’? Do you promise yourself that one day you will fulfil that coveted adventure, just as soon as you’ve saved up the money, reached a stage at work where you can spare some time to depart, or even found someone to go with? Do you worry that travelling alone as a woman is unsafe, or impractical?

I am a thirty six year old single woman (I haven’t always been single, it’s just that I choose to be now!) with a full time professional career. My love is travelling and I have been exploring this beautiful, amazing, accessible world we live in since I was seventeen. I have skied across the uncharted territory of Greenland’s ice fields, swam with wild dolphins in New Zealand, learned about the drug trade whilst living with families across Colombia and been humbled by the happiness of people with so little in south east Asia.




I come from a very ordinary family and I am not a celebrity. I don’t have unlimited finances or privileged connections and I have a career that I am passionately dedicated to and am seeking promotion. So, when at the age of seventeen, I discovered the British School’s Exploring Society were running expeditions to remote locations across the world I jumped at the opportunity and eagerly started fundraising. I had never even been on a plane before and though I didn’t realise it at the time, that adventure would mould the rest of my life.

Since then I have found inventive ways of travelling, alone, with friends and in groups. I have budgeted and travelled on a shoestring, I have saved and travelled in more comfortable conditions, I have travelled with Rotary International on an exchange programme for professional people to be ambassadors for their country abroad and I am currently in the process of finding someone to rent my flat for a few months, whilst I take unpaid leave for my next trip to South America.

I make the time to travel, I find a way and sometimes I’m a little bit brave. Sometimes I’m a little bit reckless too, but then some of my most exhilarating experiences have grown from a tingling little fluttering in my stomach, which is a sure sign that I’m about to do something I know I probably shouldn’t. Like the time in Australia, when I came across a little backpacker’s hostel with a resident, hippy photographer, who took artful pictures of his subjects completely naked. Fully aware of the obvious potential pitfalls of the situation, but with that familiar tingling in my stomach, I found myself laying, as nature intended in a remote Australian creek, with a complete stranger taking modestly posed pictures, with as much sexual interest as if I’d been a bowl of decomposing fruit. It was one of the most random, impulsive and liberating experiences of my life and one that I cherish with a mischievous pride.

I’d like to add that I wasn’t a lithe and perky teenager at the time of my naked photo-shoot either (I can say with candid sincerity that I have never been lithe or perky) but was fast approaching thirty and wishing I was a lithe, perky teenager. My point is, I learned that sometimes you have to be impulsive and throw caution to the wind – go with that fluttering feeling in your stomach and ignore your head.

I have also learned that there are of course times when you need to be a little more receptive to your sensibilities and have your wits about you. But, that isn’t to say there are any more dangers travelling a foreign country than there are going out in any local or more familiar city. You simply have to take care to research the risks, respect the cultural differences and ensure you don’t make yourself an easy target by taking unnecessary chances (although I do realise that coming from someone who stripped naked in the isolated Australian outback with a man she’d known for less than twelve hours, that may seem somewhat hypocritical!).

I always take care to plan my trips before I travel and would advise anyone to ensure you invest some time at least in researching the places and sights you want to see in the country you are preparing to visit. I have fallen foul of bad planning myself and there is nothing more disappointing than finding out too late, about somewhere you would have loved to go, had you known it existed. However, you must also ensure you keep an open mind and allow for a certain amount of flexibility along the way, to ensure you don’t miss out on an opportunity you would have loved to experience, had you just let it happen. I would never have believed I could negotiate four local buses, on a twelve -hour journey through Thailand, where I didn’t speak the language and had no real idea where I needed to be, until I got off the train at the wrong border point and had to re-think my route through Cambodia instead of Laos.

The world is amazing and through travelling it, I have discovered that so am I. I have learned so much about myself through travelling and I am more confident, self assured, open minded and flexible, which in turn enriches both my professional and my personal life. I am so passionate about travelling and the incredible experiences it brings that my dream is to inspire other people to fulfil their desire to travel and realise that it is possible, you just have to want it enough.

My book, ‘Same same but different’ is not therefore, a travel guide and it does not offer definitive advice about where to stay or what to eat. It is an honest, realistic account of my adventures, as a relatively experienced traveller to appeal to those who have shared similar adventures and encourage those who have yet to. It is available on Amazon and other good online bookstores and from the publisher Pneuma Springs at www.pneumasprings.co.uk It will also be released on Kindle in the near future.

 Sally Wootton
www.sallywootton.co.uk