At Deep Travel Magazine we’re embarking on a six-part series to find out more about female solo travelling. We will be interviewing the top voices in the industry who will be giving us expert first-hand knowledge to help our readers to best plan for their life changing adventure.

For our first interview Ellie Ireland sits down with leading voice in the industry Georgie Darling to find out about more her life and experiences with solo travelling…

Tell me a bit about yourself

I’m Georgie Darling; no one ever believes that that’s my surname, but it is. I’m
originally from the UK but I’ve been full-time travelling since November 2019. I’m a
travel writer professionally, and I do business strategy coaching for female freelance
writers at the same time. I used to work at a place called Secret London, in London,
funnily enough, and then quit five years ago to do digital marketing on a remote
island in Bali, Indonesia. I got stuck on this tiny island called Gili Trawangan for
seven months because they stopped all the boats going back to mainland Bali, which
was like three and a half hours away by speedboat. And then I wasn’t sure whether
to fly back to England and get a proper job again, and decided to give freelancing a
go instead. So I managed to build freelancing into my business, started coaching on
the side, and have been travelling around ever since then, going where I like, when I
like.

What drew you to solo travel?

The thing that encouraged me to start solo travelling was frustration, because all my
closest friends at the time had boyfriends. The more detailed answer is the fact that
travel has always been my biggest passion. It’s what I’ve always spent all my spare
money and time on. Back when I was in my second year of university I was trying to
book a trip to Lisbon, which is funny because that’s where I am now actually, I put
together a PowerPoint saying why we should go to there. And I really thought that I’d
convinced them, but then at the last minute two of them turned around and were like
‘sorry Georgie, we’re gonna go on holiday with our boyfriends instead.’ And I was so
frustrated. I remember I just went back upstairs to my bedroom and was like, ‘you what
I’m just gonna book a trip by myself.’ I’d recently discovered this
Facebook group called ‘Girls who love travel’ which is now an absolutely huge group,
which I joined, and I was just reading the comments from people who were
effortlessly solo travelling. And I kind of thought, why don’t I give that a try as well?
So I went on SkyScanner and found a flight to Copenhagen for fourteen pounds. And
I didn’t just want to travel to one country, so I thought I’d challenge myself, so I found
cheap flights that took me from Denmark to Sweden to Poland and then back to England.
So that was my first proper solo trip. I met so many other solo travellers,
and when I got back I immediately booked another trip to Budapest and Bratislava,
and it feels very cringe to say but it opened up a whole new world for me.

Do you have a favourite travel experience? Something you’ll always remember

So, when I quit my job in November 2019, I quit so I could move to Bali and do this
digital marketing job/internship. And I moved to Bali having never been to Indonesia
before, and didn’t know anyone there. I stress quit my job and moved there very
spontaneously. I guess this is cringe again, but it did change my life because I met
so many amazing people out there. My friend that I’m staying with in Lisbon right
now is a friend that I met in Bali, and I ending up spending close to three and a half
years in Bali. So I think that would have to be it, those first seven months in Gili
Trawangan. That island is tiny, like there are no motorised vehicles and you can
cycle around it in thirty minutes. It was a bit like something out of Lost really. There
have been a lot of little ones, like I went on this bar crawl in Bulgaria, and ended up
chatting to a group of people and going to a rave with them just outside the city. So I
just ended up in the middle of nowhere in this warehouse and got back to my hostel
at like 7am. Just lots of random stuff like that.

What one piece of advice would you give to solo travellers?

I would say, for your first ever solo trip, over plan. Plan where you’re gonna stay, how
you’ll get from A to B, any sightseeing trips you want to go on, plan restaurants you
want to go to. I remember being quite intimidated on my first day solo travelling, I felt
a bit lost and didn’t really have a plan of where to go. It’s very useful just to have a
plan to fall back on just in case you don’t meet people that day. And I would always
recommend staying in hostels.

Which countries have you felt safest travelling in?

Portugal, definitely. One thing I love about Lisbon is that I feel very safe walking
around at any time of the day or night. It’s something I’ve been very aware of, when
I’ve been travelling. Malta I felt very safe in, and Lithuania as well. Malaysia too.

What would you say is the most fulfilling aspect of solo travel?

The confidence that it’s given me. My ability to trust the decisions that I make, and to
know that I’m not dependant on other people to have a good time. Actually,
sometimes when I’ve been away with my friends, I’ve thought maybe I would be
having more fun if I was by myself. The confidence that you build up from meeting
people all over the world is amazing, and like knowing that I can walk into a
restaurant and having dinner by myself, and feel empowered by that rather than
feeling embarrassed. I think that’s a huge thing I got from travelling.

What would you say to someone nervous about solo travel?

I would say to make your plans in advance of where you’re going to go, how long
you’re going to stay there, where you’re going to stay. And I would also say try and
join some community groups, or sign up for a few things as well. When I’m solo
travelling, I always like to look for like digital nomad groups or female specific groups
on Facebook or something like that. For example, when I lived in Bali there were two
groups. There was this one called Girls in Bali, and there was this one called Canngu
Nomad Girls, which is the town I was living in at the time. Those were very useful, A
for getting some recommendations but also B, just for making some potential friends
as well. You quickly realise that there are so many other solo travellers in the same
place. There’s also a Facebook group called Host a Sister, and it’s basically just a
version of couchsurfing, but a lot safer because it’s female specific. But it’s also not
necessarily only for accommodation, but saying like, I’m in the city for a few days,
does anyone want to hang out? So I would say, if you can try and familiarise yourself
with the place by talking to a few people in advance, that’s really going to help.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome?

For me personally, I’d say I’m very bad at making decisions. There are just too many
decisions! Like for example earlier this year my long term relationship ended and I
ended up travelling Latin America for six months by myself, which was an incredible
time. But I was in Mexico, and I was like, I’ve got five months ahead of me. Where do
I want to go? So for me, I would say the biggest challenge is like making decisions
and not having someone to just be like, Georgie, let’s go here. I’m trying to think of
other challenges I’ve had. I think nowadays I’ve travelled so much that it just comes
naturally to me.

Best/worst memories of solo travel

It’s hard to pinpoint the best ones, there are lots of them. I think one of them was in
Costa Rica a couples of months ago, and it wasn’t even really a special day. I went
for a beach day with a few of my friends, and it was just torrential rain. Like, the
whole day was lovely until the rain got absolutely torrential. And we just decided to
run into the sea, and we spent an hour jumping around in the sea and laughing the
whole time. So that was a nice but random moment.
A bad one I guess was when I was in Bratislava in Slovakia, I think that was my
second solo trip. I remember I got to Bratislava at like 9pm and went to my hostel
room, and all the lights were off, it was pitch black, and everyone was fast asleep.
And I realised that everyone in the hostel room was in their 60’s and 70’s. And I
obviously didn’t realise this until the morning, but this was back when you had to put
the bedding on yourself, so I was trying to do that in the pitch black at like 9pm at
night. And the next morning I remember sitting downstairs in the hostel and thinking,
Bratislava has a really beautiful church, but not much else. Was this a good idea? Do
I just fly home? In the end I decided to just go to Budapest, because I could get a
bus there. And that was quite funny because I got to the bus station, and the bus
was delayed for like five hours. So I ended up making friends with these three other
solo travellers who were also waiting at the bus stop. We realised this bus was going
to be hours and hours, so we found this little café next door, and just got really drunk
for five hours. And then when we finally got to Budapest we actually ended up
spending most of our time there together, so that was really nice as well. And I think
that’s just an example of, even when frustrating things happen as a solo traveller,
there’s almost always something good you can learn from it as well.

More about Georgie Darling’s business

I help female freelance writers to grow their businesses and make sure that they’re
working with clients that they’re really passionate about, that they’re covering topics
and niches that they’re really interested in, that they’re getting paid the amount they
should be getting paid, and that kind of thing. So I do that through one to one
coaching. I also have a group coaching program called Self Marketing Magic, and I
have a little monthly community membership called Momentum, which is the biggest
program I offer, in terms of people. And that’s a little community where every month
we have a call, everyone talks through what they’re working on, and I just help
people find that clarity so they can, you know, achieve their goals for that month. I
guess really, the end result of working with me is that when the person walks away,
they’re feeling a lot more confident and empowered in their business, and they know
that they can make freelance writing a career path. Maybe they have some amazing
new clients, maybe they’ve got a website, they’ve got a Linkedin, and they just feel a
lot more empowered about the state of the freelance writing world and how they can
succeed in it. I work with established freelance writers who are already regularly
earning upwards of £1000 a month. They already have some clients, they have
some income from freelancing and they know that they want to make that their
career path, but they don’t really know the strategy to get to that point. I help them
along that path.