Women in India Join Global Trend of Increased Solo Travel

Anamika Vishwakarma was 23 years old when she traveled solo for the first time. While she had planned to do so earlier, she found it difficult to convince her family to let her. She lives in a joint family consisting of her parents, grandparents, and brothers in Varanasi, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

“In 2022, I traveled solo to Manali, 1,350 kilometers from my hometown,” she says. “It was a 15-day trip. It took me four days to convince my family that I'll be able to do it alone.” Her family members worried that it wouldn’t be safe for her to be venturing alone and weren’t sure she could manage everything independently.

In fact, crimes against women are rampant in India; Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked India at the top of the most dangerous countries in the world in 2018. According to government data, a rape is committed every 15 minutes in India, and over 90% of rape victims knew the perpetrator.

Indian women have traditionally lived under patriarchal upbringing, and for decades, many of them had to seek permission from parents, brothers, or husbands to travel or work outside the home. A few decades ago, a woman traveling solo was so rare as to be unheard of. Most Indian women would travel with family or relatives, but seldom venture out alone.

However, in recent years, many Indian women have been breaking stereotypes and have started traveling solo. A study by Airbnb revealed that in 2023, 30% of Indian women who had booked accommodation in India and overseas were traveling by themselves. Experts in the travel field attribute this development in part to a dramatic increase in both employment rates and income for Indian women. Over the last six years, women’s participation in the labor force has increased by nearly 80%. As women have earned more, their confidence and independence have increased manifold.

There has also been a rise in travel companies catering to women travelers in India. Jugni, Wovoyage, Women on Clouds, Wander Womaniya, F5 Escapes, and Women on Wanderlust are some of them.

Meenakshi Arvind loves driving and has traveled solo to several countries across continents. In 2017, she went on a driving road trip with two other women. They traveled from Coimbatore in southern India to London. She found this experience transformative, and she found that many people were interested in similar kinds of trips. In 2018 she started a travel company called XPD India & Beyond that organizes self-driving road trips for people in India and abroad.

“I believe we learn a lot more when we travel solo. If you’re sitting in a group or are with family, you don’t tend to look outside the group or make many conversations outside of it. But when you’re traveling solo, you tend to learn much more and talk to other people around you,” Arvind says.

Lavina D’Souza works as an analyst in Pune, India, and has traveled solo to more than 30 countries, including Thailand, the Philippines, Latvia, Switzerland, Morocco, and Iceland. She loves the confidence boost she gets from every trip. “I love the way it makes me feel,” she says. “No matter how many solo trips I take, there are always butterflies in my tummy. I worry about whether anything will go wrong. However, when I returned from the trip, there was a lovely feeling about how I managed every aspect of the trip alone. That feeling is unparalleled.”

The uptick in Indian women traveling solo is part of a global trend. According to a report by NBC News, women in many regions of the world are increasingly planning leisure trips for themselves. Increased disposable incomes, availability of information on the internet, social media, and technology have fueled the trend.

D’Souza feels it has become easier for women to arrange travel on their own. Apps like Uber, Viator, and Booking.com enable women to research destinations, find accommodation, and book hotels and transportation without depending on a tour guide or travel agent. “The rise of mobile apps makes it easier to travel solo,” she adds.

Sumitra Senapaty is a women’s travel expert and the founder of WOW Club (Women on Wanderlust), a travel company and community that helps women travel to over 50 destinations around the world. During her travels abroad, 20 years ago, Senapaty would often see women from other countries traveling alone. “Everywhere in the world, women were traveling. But it wasn’t the same with Indian women.”

Senapaty decided to start a travel company that would look at the needs of women who are traveling solo and support them. “I targeted the modern, Indian cosmopolitan woman, and over the years, WOW Club has become more than just a travel company. It is more of a community of like-minded adventurous women who love to travel,” she says.

A majority of these women traveling on their own are economically independent, educated, English-speaking Indian women with a shared passion for travel. Both single and married women travel solo, but travel experts say that single women are doing it more. “Indian women are thinking out of the box now,” says Senapaty. “They might have loved to travel solo earlier too. But now, women have become more confident and independent and are earning well enough to be able to travel. They are looking for something more interesting in life rather than just being contained in their own circles.”

For women who are hesitant because of the very real safety concerns associated with solo travel, WOW Club offers trips for all-women groups, and makes sure to book accommodations in centralized locations. While these experiences do not constitute true solo travel, they enable women to take excursions on their own, while in the company of other women, and feel safer.

As a child growing up in Delhi, Rashmi Chadha loved playing several sports, including judo, handball, and cricket, and she had the opportunity to travel to various places in India to take part in sporting events. She was fascinated to meet other women athletes from around the world. Her mother would also take her and her sister on road trips to places like Nainital and Punjab. These experiences and her love for travel have informed Wovoyage, her travel company that organizes trips for women traveling solo or in groups.

“When I met people in other countries, they would say they wanted to travel to India because it’s beautiful, but they were worried. They thought it wasn’t safe,” Chadha says. For a few months in 2012, she stayed at a gurudwara and freelanced as a tour guide for foreigners. After this, she was inspired to start a travel company serving women. “We have a vision to make women more independent. Travel teaches us more than anything else,” she says.

More than 7,000 women have traveled with Wovoyage so far. “Earlier in India, people would say girls who are traveling solo or playing sports may not be good girls,” Chadha says. “But now, things have changed so much. Social media and the internet have also contributed to this change.”

“This movement of women traveling solo is only going to get bigger and bigger,” says Senapaty. “Women are taking out the time to travel and explore the world. They feel it’s an interesting perspective in life.”