SOLO travel wasn’t considered safe, ideal or trendy for Indian women 25 years ago.

Those who traveled alone were often criticized for defying cultural and societal norms — dismissed as adamant, single women who didn’t care about their own safety.

But that didn’t deter Dr. Sudha Mahalingam. When she tagged along on her husband’s work trips abroad, she used the opportunities to tap into her adventurous side.

Her husband, not fond of exploring, would ask Mahalingam to visit the touristy landmarks with a local guide. But she disliked planned trips and packaged tours.

“Packaged tours are so predictable,” she said. “They show you what they want to show not what you want to see.”

Two decades ago, Mahalingam quit her job in mainstream print journalism and switched careers to take up energy research. Soon after, she started receiving invitations to speak at international conferences in oil producing countries and the world of travel opened up to her.

Today, at 70, she has visited 66 countries across six continents, which she recounts on her blog Footloose Indian as well as in her book “The Travel Gods Must be Crazy.”

Owing to a hectic schedule of managing work and family, Mahalingam often had no time to organize her travel, so most of her early trips were sudden and unplanned.

She landed in the Czech Republic without a valid visa, faced the challenge of finding vegetarian food in China, got accidentally locked in a monument in Iran and was caught without proof of a yellow fever vaccination at the airport in Nairobi, Kenya.

Her most recent international trip, to see lemurs in Madagascar in 2019, was one of her favorite adventurous moments.

“It was absolutely uncharted territory, untouristy and had very few facilities. It was hardship travel and the way that I like. I was on a boat for three days and the boat didn’t have a toilet,” says Mahalingam of the ride up the Tsiribihina River to Tsingy on the western coast of Madagascar.

“Tsingy is full of jagged blade-like rock formations jutting straight into the sky. It’s quite steep and very difficult to climb these rocks and it lacerates the hand and foot. But after climbing to the other side, you see creatures you don’t see elsewhere in Madagascar.”

Mahalingam has indulged in different adventure sports too, including scuba diving and hang-gliding. She’s also trekked to Everest base camp and, at the age of 66, went skydiving in Uluru, Australia.

There were times she found herself in dangerous situations, including one night in the Kashmir Valley in 1997. She traveled with a stranger — an army officer who asked her for a lift — and after a few hours they witnessed a minesweeper vehicle driving towards them from the opposite direction, which had cleared the road of any potential explosives.

On her way to the airport the next day, Mahalingam says the car she was in was shot at by armed militants.

Colombia, Patagonia, Chile and Argentina are other places Mahalingam hopes to visit in the future.

“Even if I travel to three places every year over the next 10 years, I will not be completing my checklist. There’s quite a lot!” she admits. (SD-Agencies)