A Ticket for One: the Best Story of them All…

Travel journalist Kate Wills wasn’t expecting to be divorced after less than a year of marriage or to be forced to restart a life that had seemed so stable for so long. Luckily, her job as a writer offered her the perfect opportunity to escape from it all.

But this time, with no deadlines to hit or all-expenses-paid trips to absorb in a few days before churning out copy for a travel magazine, her jet-setting felt different. There were no photographers working alongside her or assistants booking her flights. For the first time ever, Kate was traveling alone.

Feeling unexpectedly out of her element, Kate began to scour history for stories of female travelers to inspire her. From a 4th-century nun to a globe-circling cyclist, Kate discovered that there have always been astonishing women who have broken free from society’s expectations, clearing the path for many of us to do the same.

Funny, heartfelt, and guaranteed to spark wanderlust, A Trip of One’s Own is the perfect armchair travel read to inspire you to jump in the car or hop on a plane to explore the world. This book is the must-have next read for any aspiring solo female traveler!

Following in the footsteps of the first female travel writer in Israel and Palestine

Women have many reasons for traveling alone, apart from seeking adventure. Often we’re searching for something, reaching for some meaning in our lives, something bigger and higher than ourselves.

We might go to ashrams or on meditation retreats or yoga holidays, embarking on a modern-day spiritual quest that owes much to the religious pilgrimage of old. It was under these auspices that one of the earliest recorded examples of a woman traveling alone set off into the world.

‘I know it has been a rather long business writing down all these places one after the other, and it makes far too much to remember. But it may help you, loving sisters, the better to picture what happened in these places,’ wrote Egeria, the first female travel writer.

I love to picture her, having arrived somewhere in the Levant area between ad 381 and 384, picking up her parchment, and deciding to send word back home of what she was experiencing.

I decided to travel to Israel and Palestine and follow in the footsteps of this pioneering nun. Unlike Egeria, who ventured through Constantinople to arrive in Jerusalem, I got a direct flight from London to Tel Aviv (much smoother than a donkey ride). From here I took the bus to Jerusalem and made my way to the Old City.

Behind the Walls

Although it wasn’t yet 8 am, behind the walls life was already pulsating. I randomly chose a gate through which to enter and found men smoking shisha and playing cards and boys carrying wooden wheelbarrows of kaek (a sesame-covered bread).

I bought a loaf and walked down the steep narrow cobbled alleyways, past cafes selling hummus in red plastic bowls and groups of religious tourists singing hymns on the Via Dolorosa, tracing out the journey that Christ made with his cross two millennia ago, which Egeria followed some 300 years later.

I liked the idea that Egeria was tracing Christ’s route, as I was tracing hers. I thought of Egeria again when I spotted the crumbling Roman arches stretching overhead on certain streets in the Old City – the very arches she would’ve walked under.

I passed an alleyway with a sign saying ‘The Nun’s Ascent’ in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The limestone steps were glassy from all the feet that have polished them, maybe Egeria’s too.

That night I took the bus from Jerusalem to Checkpoint 300 to reach Bethlehem. When Egeria visited Jesus’ birthplace it was part of Jerusalem. Now it is part of the Palestinian West Bank, behind a 700km dividing wall built by Israel in 2002.

I was a bit nervous as I sat at the bus stop. There was no timetable to be found, not that I’d have been able to read it in Hebrew or Arabic anyway.

But eventually, the 21 arrived and onboard I met Mahmoud, a Christian Palestinian – I noticed that it’s normal here for people to tell you their nationality and faith within the first five seconds of meeting you. He sold olive wood sculptures at Jaffa Gate and was making the journey back home.

Mahmoud told me not to worry, he does this journey every day, and he’ll help me get through the checkpoint. It was a labyrinthine concrete penning system, which called to my (privileged, Western) mind swimming pool turnstiles.

Some parts of the checkpoint were in total darkness and I had to use the torch on my phone to light the way.

I was excited to be staying at Walled Off, a hotel, museum, and art gallery right next to the wall, which the Bristol-based artist Banksy opened in 2017. Entering the candle-lit, jazz music-playing lobby after dragging my bags through the narrow turnstiles and dark corridors of the checkpoint was such a jarring feeling that I couldn’t help thinking of Casablanca or colonial times.

The hotel was surreal and full of Banksy’s trademark humor. The check-in desk was labeled ‘Rejection’ not reception, there was a Grecian bust wreathed in fabric made to look like smoke from a tear gas canister.

There were cherubs in gas masks painted on the wall, a lift jammed open with concrete breeze blocks and a printed note on my pillow from Banksy that said ‘Welcome to Bethlehem – a place renowned since Biblical times for its inadequate hostelry facilities – a tradition we’re likely to continue here’.

I was on such a high in the lobby bar, listening to a Palestinian folk singer playing a round, flat guitar – a bouzouki, he later told me – that I felt tears prick my eyes. Maybe it was the music, or the fantastical setting, or the reminder of how fortunate I am that I can come and go as I please, not only across the border between Israel and Palestine but all over the world.

Before I left, there was just time to walk down Star Street, through Manger Square, to reach the Church of Nativity. As I watched pilgrims gather for mass, in the spot where Jesus is said to have been born – just as they would have congregated when Egeria was here – I was reminded that both our journeys were inspired by writing.

The Bible was Egeria’s inspiration; she was following in the footsteps of Moses and Jesus, just as I was stepping into her shoes. By documenting her travels, Egeria hoped to conjure up her experiences in the minds of her ‘dear sisters’ at home. Maybe this is the power of travel writing.

About Kate Wills: Kate Wills is a journalist, author, and broadcaster. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Evening Standard, The Times, Vogue, ELLE, The Telegraph, Stylist, Grazia, Marie Claire, Refinery29, and SUITCASE among others. She has a weekly column in Fabulous in The Sun on Sunday. She is the host of the podcast is her first book. You can learn more here: https://kate-wills.com/