Young Female, Traveling Alone: A travelogue

by Manuela Pop

"Young Female, Traveling Alone" tells the story of a successful western female in her late twenties, who is on the verge of serious depression and leaves her comfort zone behind, embarking on a backpacking journey throughout Southeast Asia and India. On her journey, Anna discovers herself in different towns, beaches and mountains. She experiments with spirituality, drugs and rave parties. Following the loss of a close friend and the failure of a romantic relationship, in the underground rave scene of Goa, Anna roams around aloof, from one Indian town to another. Ultimately, she discovers that conversations with the locals bring insight to the search for her own identity in the world.

In the end, she learns that life is a long hard lesson, but a great gift worth living, despite the bumps along the way.

Genres: Travel

156 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 2005

Reviews

[Xanthi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't a fan of the writing style of this book, which came across more like journal entries rather than a travel narrative. The sentences were short and the writing quite plain.
There were also grammatical errors and typos, which detracted from the story.
As for the story itself, what can I say? I am not one who is keen to travel to third world countries and backpacking is not my style. Plus, to do it alone? No thanks. I thought the author was brave to embark upon it, as she was very much in danger several times. On one hand, she showed much savvy in regards to potential scammers and avoiding them. On the other hand, she showed a strong lack of judgement by ingesting pills giving to her by people she hardly knew.
I also was astounded by the lack of pathos in the writing. The author experienced three terrible situations and events, and yet failed to adequately express much detail or emotion after the fact. The writing often followed a pattern of: this is what happened and this is what happened next, etc.
As for feeling unhappy in her Western life, and venturing into to Asia on some sort of quest to remedy that, someone should have just told her about the saying: No matter where you go, you take the weather with you.

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book initially appealed to me because I hope to undertake a similar journey through Southeast Asia in my near future, for some of the same reasons as the narrator. I'm unsure what actually happened to the author and what didn't, since most of the incidents are written with sparse emotion. Mostly, I felt Anna was pretty bemused during her entire trip, and not so much scared, homesick, lost, depressed, etc. There is one incident in the book that would have been extremely emotionally and physically abhorrent, and Anna just moves along without much acknowledgment. The love triangle was a little strange as well. The editing was rather poor, and some of the phrasing was strange. It didn't really feel like an emotional soul searching adventure like was promised on the cover copy. The resolution seemed tacked on as well. I didn't mind the short chapters, but I wish there'd been a lot more description of the different countries. Goa didn't sound much different from Bangkok or any place in Laos. Even her trek through the jungle didn't sound all that exotic.

I did, however, learn a lot about backpacking and that's why I'm giving it two stars.

[Pepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

One courageous female! I loved Ms. Pop's tale of her journey through far away, scary, exotic and mysterious countries. I have always been fascinated with India and liked that most of the book was about India. While reading this book, I imagined myself traveling alone through foreign countries, experiencing new cultures, but decided that I would be too afraid! Ms. Pop had found herself in some scary situations! Overall, a very nice read. Simply written and straight to the point. I read the book in one not-too-long sitting.

[melydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Feeling unaccountably miserable living the life of a successful Westerner, Anna decides to leave it all behind to backpack around Asia. This book is comprised of many very short chapters, more like a series if memories than a cohesive narrative, and told in the blunt style of a personal diary. As someone who has never seen any of the places Anna visits, I would prefered a lot more detail and description, but I still learned a lot about the life of the solo backpacker.