On losing my nerve with remote travel

As a solo female traveller, Kia no longer ventures to remote places. Here, she reckons with the loss of the world’s wildest corners “Kia, you have a pilot’s license, right?” asks Reena, my eldest sister, in our family group chat. “No, but I like that as part of my lore,” I reply. It’s nice to have lived the sort of life that leads my own sister to believe that I know how to fly a plane. It’s been a full life with plenty of adventure. I have indeed flown a plane (but only once) and jumped out of a couple of others. I’ve dived with sharks, crossed a landslide and bungy jumped into a chasm. Kia, the family’s would-be pilot I’ve also travelled to some wildly remote places. I’ve camped by the caldera of Erta Ale in the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia. I’ve slept in Lac Abbé, a nowhere land at the eastern reach of Djibouti. I’ve spent time on Mafana Island in Tonga and Tanna Island in Vanuatu, mere specks in the Pacific Ocean. Throughout it all, there has been one constant: Peter. I love adventure travel – I’ve written before about why it’s sexist to assume that I don’t – but I also recognise that I wouldn’t have visited these remote places without a man by my side. It’s not that I wouldn...