Hello. I’m R.
I’m British, born and bred in South East England, and of Nigerian and Malaysian-Chinese descent.
I like to travel, a lot of the time solo, and mostly use travel blogs to help plan my trips.
I noticed that whilst there were loads of promoted travel information out there from a solo female’s perspective, there was very little promoted information from the perspective of a solo person of colour.
I’ve created this blog to share my experiences of travelling and increase the representation of different travellers online.
Other people’s perspectives and experiences provide important information for safety and cultural context.
I first started travelling in 2013 when an unexpected gap year between school and university presented itself to me.
I had no real interest to go anywhere. And since I regularly made trips over to South-East Asia to visit family, this typical ‘copy-and-paste’ gap year option didn’t really interest me. Instead, a friend’s unconventional suggestion to travel across the states (alongside my celebrity obsession with Zac Efron) led to us riding the Greyhounds from Boston to Los Angeles.
To this day, few trips rival the vast experiences and memories made during those 3 months.
And so I began to solo travel
Over the next few years, I continued to be drawn back to America. Returning to some of my favourite cities, living in Memphis TN for a year, and continuing to explore the diverse landscapes that made me love America so much.
It was on these trips that I started to solo travel. Moving to a new country, I got comfortable meeting new people and doing things on my own. I got into the mindset that if I wanted to do something I shouldn’t let the fact that I haven’t got someone to go with stop me. Once you start to look at the world through this lens you’ll notice that there are actually loads of other people out here going at it alone.
There are actually loads of other people out here going at it alone.
It’s been about 10 years since that first trip across America. In that time I’ve mostly been a student (4 years undergrad, 4 years post-grad, I have a PhD) travelling when I can for as little as I can.
Right now, I am currently living and working in London, UK. I put off working a 9-5 for as long as I could and have since succumbed to a desk-based office job, which is actually very flexible (thanks COVID). My mental health and finances are better off for it, and it is much nicer to be able to travel without having an unpaid credit card bill looming over you.
