HIGH COST OF SOLO TRAVEL

When will Single Travellers receive a fair deal?

The market caters for single home-owners, single parents and single dating, but apart from a few operators offering mundane package tours, solo travellers are ignored.

I cannot be alone in finding holidays that appeal, the penalty for my interest being that I must pay for two. Me and myself.

I refer in particular to `flight specials` (with pp in small print) and to hotels charging double room rates, for single occupancy.

"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world," writes Freya Stark, who frequently travelled alone in areas where few Europeans had left a footprint.

I agree. And perhaps the greatest pleasure of single travel is to be able to plan a day, without having to juggle with what a companion wants to see/do. (There be nothing worse - as an African proverb says, than a `bad` travel companion).

It`s not selfish. Neither is it strange. Any genuine solitary traveller will confirm that travelling alone is the best way to meet local people and to explore the culture that you have come from far to enjoy.

The Victorian women travel writers Isabella Bird, Mary Kingsley, and Marianne North, all travelled alone, each of them proclaiming that companions were a nuisance..

And in those days, there were no sites such as www.journeywoman.com to provide helpful advice for independent feet.

Perhaps `men` have a similar website. My appeal is for all single travellers.

c.Christine Osborne

Image: Woman traveller Indonesia

Source: www.copix.co.uk