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The life and times of explorer Isabella Bird – and tips for solo travellers in the Covid age To mark International Women’s Day, delve into the Victorian traveller s daring deeds – and the writer s recreation of one of her journeys 8 March 2021 • 11:49am Fascinated by Bird’s story, I felt I needed to understand her motivation for undertaking such extreme journeys Credit: GETTY America was no place for tourists in the years surrounding the American Civil War. It was a lawless, dangerous country, certainly not the place for a young English girl to be riding thousands of miles in crammed “stages” (stagecoaches) or “cars” (trains). But Isabella Bird was fearless and, in 1854, wrote about being stuck on a train with prairie men telling stories, hunters with rifles, Mexicans singing Spanish songs and New Englanders belting out Yankee Doodle. She dodged outbreaks of cholera, took steamers (which promptly sank) on the Great Lakes, befriended freed sl ....