[discreteevent]

Dervla Murphy (Irish solo travel writer, in her eighties now) has often expounded the value of travelling alone. Basically she says that if you travel with others it's a safe cocoon. But if you travel alone you end up observing much more and interacting much more with the culture and people you visit.

[oska]

And this is a woman who went out of her way to avoid a 'safe cocoon'. Such as traveling up the Indus valley on donkey-back in the 1970s. She did it when she was a single mother and took her daughter, aged less than 10, along with her. Just the two of them.