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For thousands of women across the world, wanderlust has become the way, with their life becoming the extension of their travels and not the other way around. With the ever changing developments in the world and the definition of ease of travel getting expanded, it can be said that the desire of these globetrotting women is definitely backed up by the feasibility. However, this was not the same forever and in the old world with its societal conventions and restricting, women explorers were an occurrence of a rarity. Although amidst all these conventions, stood apart some women that set the ball rolling for traveling women and their unbelievable tales of extraordinary adventures is etched in the history of globe forever. Some of them can be easily called the custodian of the inspiration that has through years have led many women to embark on their remarkable journeys.

Isabella Bird:

The first Women ever to be inducted into the Royal Geographical Society of London, Isabella Bird was an intrepid and profound traveler who went around the world, often alone. A writer, photographer, and naturalist, Bird’s life of traveling after a long period of being sick and upon an advice of a sea voyage from her doctors in 1854. She left to travel to the United States of America and then went on to travel many corners of the world. She went to Australia which she disliked, and then to Hawaii (known in Europe as the Sandwich Islands), her love for which prompted her second book. In between through the bouts of illness, she went on to travel extensively in Asia covering: Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaya.

In 1886, when her husband John Bishop passed away, she once again embarked on a journey. This time it was India. Bird studied medicine and resolved to travel as a missionary.

Despite being nearly 60 years of age, she set off for India. Arriving on the subcontinent in February 1889, Bird visited missions in India, visited Ladakh on the borders of Tibet, and then traveled in Persia, Kurdistan, and Turkey. In India, working with Fanny Jane Butler, she founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar, Kashmir as an ode to her recently deceased husband.

Ida Pfeiffer:

Starting at the age of forty-five, Ida Pfeiffer was an Australian globetrotter ow celebrated as one of the world’s first female explorers. Barred from the Royal Geographical Society due to being a woman she held membership at the geographical societies in Berlin and Paris.

Ida Pfeiffer’s who books on her travels were translated into seven languages. Her first trip around the world started in 1846 passing Brazil, Chile and other countries of South America, as well as Tahiti, China, India, Persia, Asia Minor and Greece.

She returned home in 1848 but only to embark on her second journey around the world merely three years later.

Annie Londonderry:

Annie Londonderry the first woman to circle the globe on a bicycle. A bet was made that challenged her to circumnavigate the world in under 15 months while earning at least $5,000 along the way. What might seem a silly wager became a way to challenge the concept of female propriety as well as a chance for her to show just how a woman might get on in the world on her own.

Departing from her husband and children on June 25, 1894, Londonderry set off from the Massachusetts State House in Boston with a crowd of 500 looking on. Along the route, she sold promotional photos of herself and made paid appearances. She leased out advertising space on her clothes and bicycle, among these a billboard for Londonderry Lithia Spring Water.

Once her ride was complete, The New York World called her adventure “the most extraordinary journey ever undertaken by a woman.”

Nelly Bly:

A pioneering journalist Nelly Bly traveled around the world in 72 days, the first person to do so. In 1888 Bly suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional Around the World in Eighty Days into fact for the first time.

A year later she embarked on her 24,899-mile journey. During her travels around the world, Bly went through England, France (where she met Jules Verne in Amiens), Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Colombo (Ceylon), the Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Bly’s bold endeavor made for a series of thrilling news stories, as well as a memoir—Around the World in Seventy-Two Days.

Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz:

Earning the title of the ‘First Lady of the Ocean,” Krystyna Chojnowska-Liskiewicz. first woman to sail solo around the world in 1976. She sailed from the Canary Islands on 28 February 1976, and returned there on 21 April 1978, completing a circumnavigation of 31,166 nautical miles (57,719 km) in 401 days.

Whether it was preparing all her meals, maintaining the boat, and facing potential threats like storms, rough seas, and even pirates, she handled it all by herself for more than an year and half. She later said of her solo voyage, “Grown people should be aware that sometimes in life is lonely. But during the trip, I was not plagued by loneliness. I was not lonely, but alone. There’s a difference.”

She later said of her solo voyage, “Grown people should be aware that sometimes in life is lonely. But during the trip, I was not plagued by loneliness. I was not lonely, but alone. There’s a difference.”

Junko Tabei:

Junko Tabei was a Japanese mountaineer and the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest as well as the first woman to ascend all Seven Summits by climbing the highest peak on every continent.

Tabei endured rigorous training and conquered treacherous ice and snow in reaching the highest peaks in more than 70 nations.

She made the 29,029-foot ascent of Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, in May 1975 as a 35-year-old co-leader of a 15-woman expedition guided by six Sherpas.

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