It goes without saying that you don't need a Y chromosome to have a thirst for adventure. Although more women are free to travel these days, the assumption that pre-20th century women had none of today's freedoms is not quite correct. Some of them had adventures that would make the hairiest of hairy-chested male explorers quake in their hiking boots: reaching uncharted regions of Iran and Iraq, living with tribes, riding a dugout along a Kenyan river...We look back at their adventures, and show how you might follow in their footsteps today. By Lizzie Porter
Isabella Bird, 1831-1904
No patriarchal Victorian society would stop Isabella Bird in her tracks. This intrepid naturalist, photographer and writer explored America, Hawaii, India, Kurdistan, the Persian Gulf, Iran, Tibet, Malaysia, Korea, Japan and China on her travels, and was the first female to be elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She published at least 18 works of travel notes, photographs and sketches, and became a household name in the 1890s. Among her most adventurous trips included an embed with British soldiers, travelling on horseback from Baghdad to Tehran. She travelled well into her final years, dying just a few months after her return from a trip accompanying Berbers in Morocco.
Follow in her footsteps: Naturally Morocco offers a camel trek that deviates from the more usual tourist trails through the deep Sahara desert to Erg Lihoudi, spending the night under the stars among the dunes (01239 710814; naturallymorocco.co.uk).
Credit: Wikipedia
Annie Smith Peck, 1850-1935
An early refusal to study at Brown University because of her gender did not stop Annie Smith Peck going on to be one of the greatest mountaineers of the late 19th century. She climbed the Matterhorn in 1895, wearing a long tunic and trousers at a time when women were being penalised for wearing them in public. In 1901, she wrote in an outdoor pursuits magazine that the belief that skirts do not hinder movement is "obviously absurd", adding that, "For a woman in difficult mountaineering to waste her strength and endanger her life with a skirt is foolish in the extreme." She was an ardent suffragist, and in 1909, she climbed Mount Coropuna in Peru, planting a flag on the summit that read 'Votes for Women!' The ascent was one of her many expeditions in South America.
Follow in her footsteps: any attempt to ascend the Matterhorn should not be taken lightly. Paul Hart, an experienced mountaineer, wrote about his climb of the Swiss peak for Telegraph Travel earlier this year, describing looking out at one point over "an almost vertical fall away for several hundreds of feet to the glacier at the bottom."
Steppes Travel has a "Central and Northern Peru" itinerary, which includes hiking in the Cordillera Blanca and Negra mountain ranges, and a visit to the largest ancient stone structure in South America, the Kuelap citadel. From £3,995 per person (01285 601 608; steppestravel.co.uk)
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Aimée Crocker, 1864-1941
Aimée Crocker had a tale or two to tell. Aside from lavish parties, husbands and lovers, she travelled widely in the Far East. In her autobiography, she tells of escaping headhunters in Borneo, poisoning in Hong Kong, and avoided murder by servants in Shanghai. While away, she was christened Princess Palaikalani Bliss of Heaven by King David Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii, and then Princess Galitzine when she wed her fifth and final husband, Prince Mstislav Galitzine.
Follow in her footsteps: See our guides to Hong Kong, Hawaii, and China.
Credit: Wikipedia
Freya Stark, 1893-1993
"An imaginative aunt who, for my ninth birthday, sent a copy of the Arabian Nights, was, I suppose, the original cause of trouble." Freya Stark begins her 1934 book, "The Valley of the Assassins" with this description of her introduction to the Middle East, from which point she was hooked.
Overcoming injury in her youth, she travelled extensively throughout the region, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey and Iran, where she ventured into the previously uncharted northern area of Luristan, and travelled alongside nomads. In The Valley of the Assassins, she describes her interactions with local people and muses on travelling independently. Her comment, "The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is a surprised", is a depressingly realistic reflection of the times. Freya Stark later worked for the British Ministry of Information in Aden, in Yemen, Baghdad, and Cairo.
Follow in her footsteps: Travel the Unknown (020 7183 6371; traveltheunknown.com) has a 14-day "Troglodytes and Assassins" group tour to northern Iran, which visits many of the castles built to fight off Arab invaders on the route that Stark traced through the region. From £2,895 per person, including return flight.
Credit: Alamy
Gertrude Bell, 1868-1926
TE Lawrence may be the better known British Army officer at the centre of engineering control of the Middle East in the early 19th century, but Gertrude Bell's knowledge of the region was pivotal. Through extended travels through Mesopotamia, she was key to the creation of the modern state of Iraq. After her death, she was described in an obituary as unrivalled in her sense of exploration: "No woman in recent time has combined her qualities - her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigour, hard common sense and practical efficiency - all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic spirit."
Follow in her footsteps: Iraq is currently off limits to tourists, but visitors might consider neighbouring Jordan as an alternative. Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000; coxandkings.co.uk) offers group tours and tailor-made itineraries to the country.
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Harriet Chalmers Adams, 1875-1937
Reporting for Harpers magazine, American Harriet Chalmers Adams was the only woman allowed in the trenches in France during the First World War, but her adventures didn't end when the conflict was over. She travelled in Asia and the South Pacific, traced Christopher Columbus's route through South America with her father, and crossed Haiti on horseback, while accounts of her trips were published in National Geographic magazine.
Follow in her footsteps: Wild Frontiers (020 7736 3968; wildfrontierstravel.com) has an 11-day group tour of Haiti from £2,495 per person, excluding flights, which offers hiking around the small village of Kay Piat and on the wild central plateau.
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Delia Akeley, 1875-1970
More often known by her nickname, Mickie, Akeley married her taxidermist husband Carl Akeley, who formed the African Hall at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The pair went on huntin', shootin' and, er, killin' expeditions to Africa, where specimens were shot and taken back to the US. The couple later divorced, but Delia continued to travel in Africa. She was one of the first Westerners to explore the desert between Kenya and Ethiopia, and she rode a dugout canoe along the Tana River in Kenya.
Follow in her footsteps: travellers today will hopefully take a more benevolent view of African wildlife. The Ultimate Travel Company (020 3582 2666; theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk) offers a 14-day "Ultimate Safari" tour from £7,346 per person.
Credit: Alamy
Amelia Earhart, 1897-c. 1939
An air show in Long Beach in 1920 changed Amelia Earhart's life forever: she knew after 10 minutes in the air that she had to learn to fly. She soon became the proud owner of a bright yellow biplane, nicknamed "The Canary", had her hair cropped short, and even, it is said, slept in her aviation jacket for three nights to give it a more worn look. In 1932, she became the first woman to fly non-stop across the Atlantic on her own, but her short life ended in tragedy just years later. While attempting a round-the-world flight in 1937, her plane was lost en route to Howland Island, an uninhabited outcrop 1,700 nautical miles from Honolulu. It was never recovered, and Earhart was declared dead in 1939.
Follow in her footsteps: Flight travel is thankfully less hazardous today. Round the world flights are widely available for everyone from gap-year students to more affluent older travellers, perhaps looking to cash in their pensions on a trip of a lifetime. Round the World Experts have a three-centre London to Bangkok to Nadi, Fiji, to Sydney to London flights (0800 082 9976; roundtheworldexperts.co.uk) Those looking to cross the Atlantic can do so on regular services from British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, which are more mundane, but safer than in Earhart's time.
Credit: Getty
Junko Tabei, 1939-
Junko Tabei has bagged more peaks than most men twice her stature. In 1975, she became the first woman to reach the summit of Mt Everest, surviving an avalanche that caused her to lose consciousness for six minutes on the ascent. She has also climbed the Matterhorn, Mt Fuji, and in 1992 became the first woman to complete the "Seven Summits" challenge (reaching the top of the highest peak on each continent) when she stood atop Puncak Jaya in Indonesia. As of March 2008, she had climbed the highest peaks of 56 countries, and in an interview in 2012, told the Japan Times: "I've never felt like stopping climbing — and I never will — even when I myself have seen people killed in accidents in the mountains."
Follow in her footsteps: recent concerns about rubbish left on Mt Everest by climbers, as well as the significant physical challenge, should be taken into consideration by anyone thinking about attempting to summit the world's highest mountain. For those who can manage it, the New Zealand based company Adventure Consultants (0064 3 443 8711; adventureconsultants.com) offers a 63-day trip from $65,000 USD, excluding flights to Nepal. Or you could just trek to Everest base camp, which is a much more manageable affair. KE Adventure (017687 73966; keadventure.com) has a 17-day lodge based trek from £1,395 per person, excluding flights.
Credit: DEVENDRA M SINGH/AFP/Getty Images
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