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Women travel

Women travel to the ends of the earth, its highest peaks and greatest depths, to feed an insatiable hunger for adventure. Whether you’re a mother, a military veteran, a missionary or anything else, women are a growing force and have become the fastest-rising demographic in the travel industry.

“Consider tourism and travel, where experts agree that women are fueling an explosive growth, making 80% of decisions and expected to spend more than $125 billion this year,” according to Forbes.

For Dianette Wells, her travel seed was planted when she was 16 and first saw Mount Whitney. She was driving north from Los Angeles on California’s scenic Highway 395 and looked to the left. There it was: California’s highest peak.

“I was immediately drawn to it,” Wells said.

Seventeen years later, in 1998, she climbed the mountain for the first time. And it changed her life forever.  Since then, she has been unstoppable: summiting Mount Whitney 10 times, the Grand Tetons four times, reaching the peaks of the Seven Summits of the world, including seven climbs of Mount Kilimanjaro. She has completed several adventure races and international ultramarathons.

She attributes her adventure sports travel to helping her helped through one of the most challenging periods of her life following the death of her 23-year-old son, who was wingsuiting in Switzerland. Her zeal for travel and adventure has never abated, not following her son’s misfortune or even after contracting a severe infection in Fiji that required medical evacuation to New Zealand for treatment and hospitalization before returning home to the U.S. At 56 years old, she continues to travel the world, scaling mountains and fulfilling her lifelong passion.

Regarding women’s adventure travel, Amanda Burrill forges new paths. Burrill is a traumatic brain injury survivor, Navy veteran, chef, journalist and outdoor adventurist. When she gets above a tree line, emotion overcomes her, and she is filled with peace, beauty and solitude.

“I am more free than ever at that moment,” she said. “It’s the only place I have an escape from the things in the world that burden my mind and exhaust me.”

Burrill lives every day in the aftermath of two traumatic brain injuries—the first sustained while serving with the military in Iraq, the second after losing her balance and falling down a flight of stairs, across a landing and into a wall.

Outwardly, it’s difficult to tell she is struggling at all. She’s a passionate adventure climber and has summited Aconcagua, Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Elbrus and Denali. But inwardly, she has been on a nearly 20-year journey to diagnose and understand how her injuries have impacted her brain and everyday life. For her, new experiences have become the path toward healing her brain. Burrill highlights that some of her life plans before her injury is no longer in the picture for her future. But she has no regrets.

“If I hadn’t lost so much [from her traumatic brain injuries] then I might not have considered mountaineering as something to seriously pursue. There’s no downside to pivoting toward the things that give you pure joy.”

Cassidy Cann’s life is quite different from the “American Dream.” She’s given it up for something she believes is greater and more rewarding. In 2014, she and her husband moved from Phoenix, Arizona, to a remote jungle village in Papua New Guinea with their two young boys.

They spent two years preparing for their move, learning a foreign language, studying cross-cultural living and learning how to teach the texts of their faith. When they left their home, Cann knew they would be trading the comforts of life in America for what she calls a “difficult but beautiful” life in Papua New Guinea.

Her experience there over the past eight years has proven this to be true over and over again. “It’s humbling because we get to see the impact we’re having on the people in the village,” she said. “Those who are born here have little access to education, especially the women. In our time since moving here, we have created a literacy program to teach any willing person to read and write in their local dialect.”

There are many reasons why women travel. For Wells, Burrill and Cann, it’s to feel, heal and learn. One survey says, “women see traveling as a chance to reward themselves and see it as an opportunity to escape.” The latest data also reveals that women love to travel more than men, and they’re doing it for change through self-examination and revelation.