Women Archives - Com Namibia

From the Great Wall to the Avatar Mountains: Women Travel to China as Strangers

October 25, 2026 by Amara Nambinga

There are those who had long dreamed of stepping onto the Great Wall, those who wanted to glimpse the vertiginous mountains from the film Avatar, and those who were simply seeking a new destination to add to their travel notebook. In September 2026, ten women aged between 25 and 64 gathered in China for a sixteen‑day circuit organized by Copines de Voyage, having not known each other beforehand.

On the agenda were Shanghai’s skyscrapers, the imperial palaces of Beijing, Zhangjiajie’s towering rock pillars that seem to float in the mist and are often associated with Avatar landscapes, the terraced rice fields, and the lanes of ancient villages, before finishing in Hong Kong. Yet this trip bringing ten women together also answered another wish: to be able to travel far, even when nobody in their circle is available to accompany them. A format that appeals to travelers with very different profiles, balancing a need for freedom, a taste for encounters, and a desire to go with the flow.

China, the trip they no longer wanted to postpone

For several participants, two images were enough to decide: the Great Wall and the Zhangjiajie mountains, those immense columns of rock that seem to float in the mist and are often linked to the landscapes of Avatar. Bringing these two sites together in a single circuit made all the difference.

Virginie, in her forties, had never imagined China as a destination with landscapes. “To me it was just concrete, tall buildings, pollution, factories,” she recalls. But everything changed when, in May 2026, a friend set off solo for three weeks across the country and sent back photos.

Virginie thus discovers a China very different from the one she had pictured. After a stay in Vietnam, she weighs a trek in Nepal against a circuit in the Middle Kingdom. She compares the possibilities, considers the material constraints of a trek, and then decides on China. The Zhangjiajie scenery, the Longji rice terraces, and the Li River landscapes make her want to explore this diversity firsthand.

Even for those who had already visited part of the country, the program sparked a fresh urge to pack their bags. This was the case for Inès, 31. Based in South Korea for four years, this seasoned traveler has already taken part in eleven trips offered by the agency. Shanghai and Beijing? She’s familiar with them. But when she discovers an itinerary that combines the Great Wall with the Zhangjiajie’s spectacular mountains, she’s tempted. China still holds enough discoveries to justify another departure.

Tania, 25, has long been drawn to Asia. The videos, photos, and reports about China eventually convinced her. The trip confirms her enthusiasm: “The landscapes change so completely; if I could do it again, I would do it again and again.”

When travel desires don’t align with those of loved ones

Yet behind these cravings for China lies a recurring challenge: finding someone to go with. Friends don’t always share the same vacation days or priorities, couples have their plans, parents their children, and budgets don’t always move at the same pace. As a result, some journeys remain dreams. For some women, group travel becomes an alternative to solo trips, allowing them to keep exploring without waiting for others.

Inès has been living in South Korea when this ribbon of reality became clear. She enjoys holidays every three months and can allocate a substantial budget to getaways. But friends back in France don’t share her schedule or the means to keep up. Traveling with colleagues isn’t always a viable option either. By joining a group, she no longer needs to wait for calendars to align, and she can continue exploring Asia and discovering the world at her own pace.

Marion, 33, took the leap into women-only travel for another reason. As the New Year approached, she didn’t know what to plan. Her circle struggled to commit, and she dreaded ending up with an itinerary that wouldn’t suit her at the last minute. She finally tried a first, shorter trip, to Lapland.

Virginie also found in this format an answer to the mismatch. In 2016, she wanted to celebrate Holi in India and discover the Taj Mahal, but her friends were either coupled, had children, or lacked the necessary budget. “Or I don’t like traveling alone because it’s dull, there’s no sharing,” she explains. Since that first trip, she has participated in four journeys with the platform.

For Tania, the obstacle is the fear of traveling solo. “I love traveling, but for now I’m too afraid to do it all by myself! For me Copines de voyage was the chance to travel alone but with company.” She also appreciates not having to handle everything. “I didn’t have to worry about arranging visits, activities, hotels, guides, etc.” The presence of a group and a prearranged program allows her to discover a distant country without bearing all the responsibility for each step.

Strangers, apprehensions, and sometimes new friends

The question remains that neither the program nor the landscape photos can fully anticipate: will we get along with the women we will share two weeks with? Affinities aren’t controllable, and the idea of spending days with nine strangers can be intimidating. That’s why many participants prefer to test the concept on a shorter stay before committing to a longer journey.

That was the case for Shazia, a Swiss woman in her thirties. She was eager to discover China, but she chose to test 100% women-led stays with a one-week circuit in Jordan before committing to sixteen days.

As for Virginie, her experience reassured her on one point: even when personalities differ, you often end up finding someone you click with. Affinities form on site, the participants don’t need to share the same lives or habits to enjoy the experience. “You meet nine new girls and often you form a fondness for a few of them”, she says. Some encounters even endure after the trip, with friendships that persist and trips planned for two outside the agency’s framework.

In China, the ten travelers departed with their own dreams and their own reasons. Some sought landscapes glimpsed in photographs, others an adventure they wouldn’t have dared to organize alone. They shared a common thread: they didn’t want to wait for someone to join them. And perhaps that is where the appeal of these women-only journeys lies: turning the absence of a travel companion from an obstacle into the starting point of a new adventure.

Women Changing the Face of the Australian Outback

September 23, 2026 by Amara Nambinga

À Winton, trois générations de femmes qui, chacune à leur manière, participent à faire vivre et raconter l’Outback - Photo : Sébastien Cros / WeTravelAustralia

Climats du Monde

I did not come to the Outback to write an article about women.

For three weeks, with my niece Marion behind the camera, our travel diary for TourMaG was meant to tell a territory, its routes, its landscapes and above all those who live there.

Yet, along the kilometers, something began to catch my attention.

At the entrance of a bush hotel, behind the bar of a pub, in an open-air cinema, in the middle of a kangaroo sanctuary, in an art gallery or behind the barriers of a rodeo, they were there.

Not necessarily where the traditional Outback imagination would have placed them, and rarely occupying the spotlight to claim their role. They worked, created, welcomed, transmitted, led.

It took me several steps to understand that this sequence of encounters might tell us something about today’s interior Australia.

In Broken Hill, another story behind the miners’ tale

It’s probably in Broken Hill that the thread began to unfold.

Artist Amanda Johnson belongs to the fourth generation of a family from this mining town on the edge of the desert.

In her studio, her paintings tell of the bush, but also of the women who inhabited it. One of her most revealing works was born from a commission for the centenary of the Country Women’s Association. They initially asked for a painting.

While poring over the association’s archives and a century of local history, Amanda felt that a single painting would not suffice. She ultimately built her narrative across several panels, tracing the achievements of these women by era.

Listening to her, I began to view Broken Hill differently. The city isn’t devoid of masculine legends. Miners went underground, fortunes were made and lost, BHP was born here and the “line of lode” belongs to Australian industrial mythology.

But beside this story existed another reality, perhaps less spectacular but just as fundamental: women raising families, organizing the community, working, caring, bearing isolation, and sustaining lives built around the mine.

Amanda wasn’t trying to rewrite this history. She was complementing it. And this nuance would accompany me for the rest of the journey.

In Winton, intuition becomes evident

A few hundred kilometres further north, Winton would reveal a completely different face to this feminine presence.

This small town in Queensland is associated with some of Australia’s great myths: Waltzing Matilda, the dinosaurs, the origins of Qantas, the vast cattle stations of Western Queensland.

Historically, the world here has been deeply masculine. When I speak with several residents about the impression the town gives today, the same story returns: that of the shearers, the men of the properties, old street fights, a harsh culture shaped by work and isolation.

And yet, the Winton we encountered exuded something else. The town now has as mayor Cathy White, the first woman to hold that role. Lydia Evert, she, oversees the Royal Theatre, one of the last outdoor cinemas still operating in Australia.

In this corrugated-iron venue opened in 1918, handed down in her husband’s family since 1937 and still run by volunteers, locals used to come to dance, attend boxing matches, meet up and sometimes fall in love.

Lydia doesn’t merely preserve the walls: she keeps a place alive where a community continues to gather under the stars.

Elsewhere in Winton, other women lead, undertake, organize events, welcome travelers or take care of wildlife.

In a wildlife refuge in Winton, Marion found herself with a young kangaroo in her arms. This kind of encounter speaks volumes about the Outback: a door opens, someone begins to share their daily life and, a few minutes later, you step into a fragment of their life. These are not staged attractions. They are people who agree to share their world.

Amanda-Lyn Pearson: taking the bush codes and reinventing them

Then we met Amanda-Lyn Pearson. The night before, she had been under the lights of the Dusty Hour: sequins, a top hat, acrobatics and the crack of the stockwhip.

The next morning, with an Akubra on her head and boots on her feet, she guided us through Crackup Corner, the remarkable HQ she built at the edge of Winton with her husband Will.

Amanda-Lyn grew up in remote Australia, often on the road. She wanted to be an artist without really knowing how one could practice this craft from the bush. She learned, traveled, sought skills and performed in different places around the world before the Western Queensland finally asserted itself as an obvious choice: “It felt like home.”

What she does today is hard to classify, and that is precisely what makes it compelling. The Crack Up Sisters borrow from traditional bush arts, the stockwhip, circus, burlesque, acrobatics and clowning to tell Australia in their own way.

She does not reject the old Outback codes. She takes them, plays with them and carries them elsewhere. When we discuss Winton and its evolution, Amanda-Lyn also revisits this masculine story.

The dinosaurs arrived, tourism developed, the town changed. And with it, another energy became more visible. It was at that moment that I stopped thinking my encounters were coincidences.

In small towns, the ones that keep the door open

Guardians, but above all facilitators

One English word kept returning to me during this journey: custodian. “Guardian” would be its most immediate translation, but it remains imperfect.

For these women, they do not stay still protecting an idealized vision of the past. On the contrary. Many of them take what deserves preservation and find a way to pass it on, sometimes reinventing it, for a new generation, for a new generation.

Lydia keeps a cinema that is more than a century old alive rather than a museum piece.

Amanda Johnson brings an otherwise less visible history into painting.

Amanda-Lyn turns bush gestures into contemporary spectacle.

Others protect wildlife, lead a community, host an event or open the door of a pub every morning to travelers from the other end of the country.

To preserve and to evolve, moving together. Perhaps that, at heart, is what touched me most about them.

Another way of telling the Outback to French travelers

For French tourism, this story isn’t merely anecdotal. It speaks to how we might tell the story of the Australian interior.

The Outback will continue to captivate with its red tracks, its cattle stations, its stockmen, its road trains, its centenarian pubs and its rodeos.

It is certainly not about erasing this imagery: it belongs to the country and remains deeply alive. But stopping at that image would today amount to telling only part of the story.

Contemporary travel can also enable meeting the artist who paints the memory of the Broken Hill women, the one who turns the stockwhip into stage language in Winton, the woman who keeps a cinema under the stars, the one who rescues injured kangaroos, or those who work behind one of the country’s great rodeos.

These are precisely the encounters that turn an itinerary into immersion. And they remind us of something our 5,000 kilometers taught us: in the Outback, the territory can never be fully understood from the road. You must stop, push a door and speak to those who live behind it.

The women who changed my view of the Outback

Sur la route, au coucher du soleil : au fil des rencontres, les femmes de l’Outback ont fini par changer ma manière de regarder ce territoire - Photo : Sébastien Cros, WeTravelAustralia

At first, I thought I would find one of the last territories where the masculine imagination of Australia fully survived: miners, stockmen, cattlemen, pilots, cowboys. They were there, and some offered extraordinary encounters.

But that isn’t exactly how I view the Outback today. Behind its most visible myths, I met women who preserve its memory, keep its communities alive, and, without necessarily seeking to proclaim it, are already helping write what it will become.

In Big Red, to the west of Birdsville, I photographed Marion at sunset in the middle of a conversation with a young woman from the Birdsville Hotel team.

Two silhouettes against the desert, almost nothing around them, just a conversation as the sun disappeared behind the dunes. I did not yet know that this photograph would probably become the last image of this story.

The road went on. But the women I met along the way had changed the way I looked at the Outback.

Sébastien Cros

Sébastien Cros is an independent journalist and photographer based in Australia, founder of WeTravelAustralia™.

After twenty-five years in the Australian travel industry, notably as Managing Director of Across Australia (Goway group), he now dedicates his writing to editorial narratives focused on the destination, at the crossroads of storytelling, photography, and on-the-ground perspectives.

Hotels and Taxis: The Hidden Price Women Pay for Safety When Traveling Alone

August 17, 2026 by Amara Nambinga

When you’re a woman, traveling alone can sometimes be pricey. More expensive than for a man. In London, BBC journalist Lorin Bozkurt recounts that she was offered two types of capsules in a Piccadilly Circus hotel, those small design spaces where a bed simply fits in. The ones reserved for an exclusively female clientele were priced at 45 pounds (about 52 euros) per night, while the others, mixed, were priced at 35 pounds (about 41 euros).

Yet no extra comfort accompanied the first offer, aside from a corridor accessible only by card and, above all, the promise of feeling safer for an extra 10 pounds. This difference illustrates what some specialists call the “avoidance tax”, akin to its marketing cousin, the “pink tax”. Female travelers do not necessarily pay more for the same trip than their male counterparts, but they often make different decisions, motivated by safety, which can end up increasing the bill.

The luxury of having peace of mind

Better-located hotels, a taxi rather than public transport, travel insurance or an extra charge for an earlier early check-in during the day… Expenses pile up. And they aren’t necessarily the same for men. Carried by the British broadcaster, a study from the Safer Tourism Foundation shows that “64 % of women avoid walking home alone at night abroad”, compared with 43 % for the opposite sex.

Nearly half of women also forgo wandering the backstreets of an unfamiliar city at night. “They don’t travel less because they are less adventurous than men. They operate in an environment where the risks are different”, explains Stephanie Boyle, director of the Safer Tourism Foundation’s She Travels Safe campaign.

Safer, therefore more expensive

For women accustomed to traveling solo, these precautions eventually become reflexes. Jen Kaarlo, who has 53 countries under her belt, tells the BBC she plans all her movements in advance. After experiencing several troubling incidents, including being drugged without her knowledge in a bar in Paris, the young woman avoids “any risky situation”. In Panama, she even preferred to pay nearly $200 extra (about €173) to ensure she wouldn’t have to share her sleeping arrangements with strangers during a trip to the San Blas Islands.

Jodie Hughes, who has been traveling alone since the age of 19, makes the same point. She says she used to favor youth hostels to save money, but now chooses other options because a women-only dorm can be more expensive than a mixed dorm. “I’d rather travel less often, but when I travel, I want to be safer”, she says. At Generator Hostels, whose Bruges property has been singled out, it is explained that women’s rooms are “in high demand” and that their prices reflect that demand.

“Safety should not be a competitive element. It shouldn’t be something that lets companies think they can charge more because they are safer”, replies Stephanie Boyle. Beyond the price of rooms or transport, these precautions also carry a less visible cost. They force travelers to plan more, sometimes give up going out, or choose a more expensive option rather than a spontaneous one. The question is therefore no longer only whether one can afford an extra expense, but whether one can afford not to spend it. “The mental load, I think, is the heaviest of all”, confesses Jen Kaarlo.

From Female Travelers to Influencers: We Women [ABO]

July 2, 2026 by Amara Nambinga

Des voyageuses aux influenceuses : nous les femmes ! - Depositphotos.com Auteur Nadezda_Grapes

CroisiEurope

… The idea struck me suddenly to glance at the great pens of the Beat Generation, those of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Jack London… which to this day remain references in literature dedicated to the “road” and all its symbolism of counterculture waging war against an “american dream” that no longer answered the aspirations of the sixties.

And what did I discover? Simply, that not a single female writer had the luck to be retained by literary history! Not one! While, at the same time, many young American women were traveling on unlikely roads through Asia, South America, and the Middle East!

In Europe at the same time and particularly in France, as the “backpackers” followed in the footsteps of their North American contemporaries, the landscape was equally bleak. With only a few very small exceptions (Muriel Cerf’s L’Anti Voyage), it was mainly the women engaged in the feminist struggle who were making the headlines.

“Stand up, women” shouted the newcomers coming of age, demanding sexual freedom, the right to abortion, contraception and other rights to education indispensable to the fulfillment of half of humanity!

The Pioneers!

To believe that the road and the journeys it permitted were surely the realm of these young women whose appearances were made uniform by roughly cut hair and embroidered shirts.

To believe that travel, being synonymous with learning and knowledge, was closed to women still confined to their kitchen and their children.

Some names, however, began to circulate and to serve as references. It was the grand Alexandra David-Néel who began her first work with the words “Obedience is death,” explaining her thirst for travel whose culmination in 1912 was her arrival in Lhassa where she finally approached the Dalai Lama!

Reaching the age of 101 years before passing away in Dignes, Alexandra was indeed accompanied by a young servant whom she regarded as her adopted son. For all that, this icon of travel has always shown a curiosity and a courage perfectly indispensable for wandering on Asian roads where more than once she had to pass herself off as a man to move forward!

This disguise tactic is, moreover, well known to female travelers. In 1766, for instance, a certain Jeanne Barret embarked on Bougainville’s around-the-world expedition. Disguised as a sailor, she used the voyage to develop her passion for botany and collected thousands of plant samples. Unmasked in Tahiti, she returned to France some ten years later and was absolved of her fault.

We can also recall through her writings of “La monja Alferez,” this young Spanish woman who deserted her convent at the start of the seventeenth century to embark on conquest ships, disguised as a soldier. That’s Catalina de Erauso!

We also mention the one who commanded the largest pirate fleet in history. A Chinese woman born in 1775… “Innumerable, humble and extraordinary, these survivors have been swallowed up,” write Alexandra Lapierre and Christel Mouchard in their book: “They Conquered the World.” Editions Arthaud.

Georges Sand, from Venice to Majorca

Encouraged by the development of maritime and land transport, the traveling women of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are therefore not pioneers in the strict sense. They embody, without realizing it, an evolution in the status of women which, though long and full of obstacles, is undeniable. But, in France as well, these writers—“travelers”—were not numerous.

And few remember them. Flora Tristan in South America leaves a name, while Isabelle Eberhardt (born in 1877) also disguises herself as a man, leaving writings: “In the Warm Shadow of Islam.” A narrative about Algeria where she spent many years.

Among the writers of the era, the best known, Colette, was not a great traveler. A few returns between the provinces and Paris sufficed. By contrast, George Sand, a child of the nineteenth century (born in 1804), besides her travel between Paris and Nohant, experienced the hardship of travel abroad.

Majorca in the company of Frédéric Chopin during the winters of 1838 and 1839 has been mentioned by the writer in her diary with a vitriolic pen against the natives for whom she showed an unacceptable intolerance. In her book “A Winter in Majorca,” she nevertheless exercises her talent into a kind of narrative already akin to travel guides.

And, conversely, after a few months in Venice in the company of Alfred de Musset, she leaves in her correspondence lines that are both romantic and realistic about the Serenissima and its inhabitants. Lines perfectly romantic and realistic at once!

Ella Maillart, Margaret Mead… Edith Wharton!

A product of Europe in the thirties, grew tired of her gilded cage in Switzerland. After a journey across the Caucasus, she nonetheless published writings on Russian youth. Then came China, where she travels in 1934 and takes the opportunity to publish her first reports for Le Petit Parisien.

Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, India—where she eventually settles—pass before her eyes and inspire all sorts of writings. Then, back in Europe where she dies in 1997, she brings the concept of cultural travel, spiritual travel, lectures, and yoga classes. Very active, also the American Margaret Mead who used her journeys to exercise her anthropologist’s skills among the tribes of New Guinea and the surrounding region.

Highlighted by the unforgettable film “Out of Africa,” the Danish Karen Blixen also contributed to the quality of women’s travel literature. Blazing, these narratives about Africa nearly earned her the Nobel Prize.

A few more words on these superb voices who were the novelist Edith Wharton, who, in the twenties, published accounts of her travels in France, Italy, Morocco… A passionate traveler, she also used her books to offer a historical, cultural, artistic description of the countries she visited. All of this with a voice often laced with humor.

And again, we are not far from a travel guide. Finally, what about Vita Sackville-West? Born in 1892, she was a poet, gardener, journalist. Wife of a British diplomat, she stayed in the Middle East, notably in Iran, India, Egypt… from which she drew inspiration to write both novels and popular science works.

Categories World News Tags ABO, Female, Influencers, Travelers, Women