Itchy Feet Traveler Spotlight: Ashleigh Bugg Part 2

The second half of my interview with a seasoned travel expert.

Hi, Itchy Feet friends!

It’s Daniel Catena again.

Welcome back to your weekly dose of travel inspiration. Thank you for reading, I’m stoked you’re on board! 🚢

This week’s post is special. It’s part two of my interview with fellow travel lover, Ashleigh Bugg. If you missed part one, check it out here.

She was nice enough to be my guest for a new part of the newsletter called Itchy Feet Traveler Spotlight.

Once in a while, I’ll interview people who I think are expert travelers with lots of wisdom to share.

Ashleigh is the FIRST of hopefully many guests in this newsletter.

She’s been to 41 countries and counting. She’s a world citizen in its purest form, and I enjoyed learning from her. 🙏

Ok folks, let’s get back to the interview!

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Have you experienced any challenges being a female traveler? 

There are certain places or things that you have to be cognizant of as a woman.
Anywhere you are, even walking around your own neighborhood, there are certain times of night that you need to be a little bit more aware.

The basic safety tips go a long way.  

There are challenges, just being a single person traveling.

You know, a lot of people ask questions like: where's your husband or where are your kids? 

They'll be curious about you. It’s not necessarily a challenge.

It just gets in the way when you’ve had the same conversation with your Uber driver over and over. Things like that. 

The one thing that I experienced as a woman that maybe my male friends haven’t, is catcalling. But there were just a couple of times. In the US it happens, too.

I was 10 years old and did a project about Ireland. I was l captivated by other countries.

So I was like – oh, I wanna make this happen. How can I make this happen?

Any advice that you want to give women who want to travel, but maybe feel hesitant? 

I would definitely tell them to just do it.

You might not hear as many travel stories about women or travel writing from women as you do from men, but they're definitely out there.

I'm in lots of female-only groups to validate this. There's the Solo Female Traveler Network, Female Digital Nomads, Girls Gone International, Girls Who Travel. 

There are women of all backgrounds who are doing it.

So I think if you have the desire, just do it.

I have a friend from Kazakhstan who’s solo traveling and she has to put up with a lot of visa restrictions and passport restrictions.

And she's been turned away at borders because of her passport. My friend from Thailand, I met her traveling in Bosnia.

And traveling around the US and Oregon and having the time of her life.

I've seen older women traveling. Women with kids. Solo women. Young. Old. They're definitely all out there. 

So just know that you're not alone and just do it.

Find groups of supportive people. And I will say that women travelers are very supportive of one another.

I very rarely see any hate. People are out there.

I tell people don't let your gender or people's perception of your gender stop you from doing it because there are people from all genders, and all works of life traveling.

So talking about inspiration, do you have any people or books that have inspired you??

I think my biggest travel inspiration growing up was my best friend because she shared a lot of my delusions.

We were both like - we wanna go to Europe and, we wanna do this.  

So we would try to learn languages and talk in accents and just be really weird.

We actually did get to do a backpacking trip together in 2015 and went all over Europe and met our pen pals.  

She had a group of pen pals from different parts of Europe, so we saw them. She was always there to encourage me.

Because, when you're in a small town in rural Texas, you want to go travel and get out of this town.

People were like - what are you talking about?  If you have another person who wants to do that, it really helps. It encourages you.  

And then talking about books.

I read a lot as a kid. I read a lot of fantasy. I read the Hobbit.

I liked reading about this little creature who's going off on this big adventure even though he's not from a place that does stuff like that. 

Nowadays, I like to read the Best American Travel Writing series.

That one's really good for discovering new travel writers or good travel narratives.
 

You're probably the most experienced travel person I know. Do you have one thing that makes your trips easier, like a travel hack?

I think it's kind of a lazy hack, at least for me, but I've been a member of the Couchsurfing network since 2013.

A lot of times when I go to a place, I'll put out a travel alert and say I'm gonna be in these cities around these dates.

And a lot of times people from those cities will message me.  

They would say - Hey I’m going to do this activity. Do you want to meet up for coffee?

Or they would invite me to do things. 

When I went to Tunisia, I met 3 or 4 people doing that. We were walking around the city doing an impromptu tour. One of them happened to be a travel agent.  

If you can find a way to meet locals either through groups or if a meetup or something is going on, you're going to have the best experience.

They're going to know all the spots.  

If you can't do that, I always do a free walking tour the first day I get to a city.

This gets you the basics and then you go from there.  

It’s great if you don't want to download the Couchsurfing app.

With Couchsurfing, you have to have references. You have to have to be careful.  

Most cities have a free walking tour or some kind of inexpensive tour where you walk around to get to know the city, and then the tour guide will tell you where you should go.

You’re a great writer. What are your creative projects that you're working on right now? 

Thanks to your recommendation, I’ve joined Substack, so the easiest way is to subscribe to my newsletter.

I've been writing a travel guide for a while, and I have my blog.

Those are the main creative projects I'm working on that are travel-based.

I did want to do something more, where I write little poems or words with some of my photos, but I haven't worked on that yet.

What's the travel guide about?

It started off being about solo female travel. Now it's more about ways to travel whether it be studying abroad, interning abroad, working remotely, or everything.

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Thank you Ashleigh for your time and travel wisdom!  

Read and follow her content!  She’s one of my favorite travel writers out there.

• Travel Bugg  (Ashleigh’s travel blog) 

• Ashleigh’s Substack!


Take care and thanks for reading. See you next week. Once again, I appreciate you!

Daniel