ON ADVENTURE PODCAST | EPISODE 71
Episode 71: Solo Female Travel, Real Risk, and the Belonging We All Crave with Amanda Black
Episode Description
What does it actually take to step on a plane alone, head somewhere most people would call risky, and come home a different woman?
Amanda Black is the founder of the Solo Female Traveler Network, a community of more than half a million women that started as a small Facebook group during her expat years in Australia. Ten years and roughly thirty tours a year later, she leads women into places the average traveler tends to avoid: Egypt, Morocco, India, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and beyond. Bali was the first trip. Seventeen women signed up. Nine of them ended up with the company logo tattooed by the end of it.
We talk about why she leans into destinations perceived as less safe, what real risk actually looks like versus the version we imagine, and why she pushes back on the idea that travel is simply safe or unsafe. Risk, she argues, is a spectrum and a muscle, and most women have a lot more capacity to build it than they have been told.
We also get into the quieter side of all this. The cobblestone cafe in Sighișoara, Romania, where women who had known each other only a few days started telling the truth about how lonely life back home really feels. The Golden Eagle Festival in Mongolia, where she felt like she had walked into a movie set with no electricity. The unexpected pattern she keeps noticing across every trip, every country, every group: people are not really upset about the hotel room. They want to belong.
Amanda also shares why she launched Kindred Community, a smaller, slower offering built around connection retreats in Southern California, and what almost a decade of leading women into the wild has taught her about courage, capability, and the kind of friendships that get a logo tattooed on someone’s wrist.
Episode Highlights
00:00 Welcoming Amanda Black, founder of the Solo Female Traveler Network
01:00 Building a community of 500,000+ women and running tours in 25 countries
03:00 Why she leans into destinations perceived as less safe: Egypt, Morocco, India, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan
05:00 How strangers become a travel family inside the first 48 hours of a trip
08:00 From a Facebook group in Australia to a first Bali trip where 9 of 17 women got the company logo tattooed
12:00 Talking honestly with women about safety, fear, and the gray areas of real risk
15:00 Risk on a spectrum: why “safe or unsafe” is the wrong question, and how to build the muscle over time
17:00 Mongolia and the Golden Eagle Festival: stepping into a place that felt like going back in time
20:00 What solo travel reveals about how strong and capable women really are
22:00 The hidden business lesson behind a decade of tours: everybody just wants to belong
24:00 A cobblestone cafe in Sighișoara, Romania, and the loneliness that surfaces when women finally feel safe to share
27:00 Kindred Community and the next chapter: building belonging closer to home
Connect with Amanda Black
Bonus for Listeners (Free Travel Quiz):
https://thesolofemaletravelernetwork.com/where-should-i-travel-next-quiz/
The Solo Female Traveler Network
Website: thesolofemaletravelernetwork.com
Instagram: @solofemaletravel
TikTok: @sofetravel
YouTube: @sofetravel
Amanda’s TEDx Talk
Shared Firsts: Redesigning how we find belonging
youtube.com/watch?v=xSaVJH2b5H0
Amanda’s Website
Kindred Community
Website: kindredcommunity.co
Instagram: @kindred.sd
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