Expedition leader Catherine Edsell talks to Bryony Cottam about women-only adventures and the rewards of stepping outside your comfort zone
Catherine’s travel tips
– Switch off and go with the flow
– Don’t let inexperience hold you back
– Choose adventures that give something back
Swakopmund is an incongruous sight on the edge of the Namib Desert. The former German colonial town, now a coastal resort, is populated with ornately gabled buildings, strudel-filled bakeries and beer gardens. Popular with young families and backpackers, it’s often touted as Namibia’s gateway to curated adventure activities: quad biking, sandboarding, hot-air ballooning and more. For nearly ten years, Catherine Edsell has travelled here accompanied by a small group of women — but they don’t stay long. Instead, the morning after their arrival, the group packs up their things, says goodbye to the city and heads out into the desert for what Edsell calls ‘a real adventure’.
Of all the adventure tours run by Edsell, this one is her favourite — partly because it was the first. An expedition leader with more than 25 years’ experience guiding groups through the thick rainforests of Costa Rica and running remote scientific studies in Indonesia, Edsell found that life as she’d known it had suddenly stopped once she’d had kids. Many of her female friends, she noticed, were in a similar boat. So she planned a trip for them all to Namibia, where they would track desert elephants along the Ugab River. In the end, many of her friends didn’t join (‘Mother’s guilt and all that,’ she says), but other women did. Some had children, some didn’t, some were older, while others were at a crossroads in their lives. All of them wanted to be part of a women-only adventure.
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‘The Matriarch Adventure’, as Edsell’s elephant-tracking tour came to be known, offers the kind of off-grid escape into nature she believes benefits every traveller. ‘You’ve got all your mod cons in Swakopmund — then, suddenly, there’s nothing,’ says Edsell. ‘No toilets, no running water. You’re pushed right out of your comfort zone.’ There are no phones — travellers must bring a camera if they want to take photographs. Edsell insists that a truly immersive experience requires travellers to let go of everything and go with the flow. Of course, she adds, that’s not really how a normal expedition would be run, but she’s found that travellers really appreciate the experience — many are reluctant to reclaim their phones at the end of the trip.
Although the tour is designed to push boundaries, many of the women who join Edsell have little or no prior experience of adventure travel. ‘I love it when people who haven’t backpacked since they were younger come along — or people who have never camped at all. One woman had never worn flat shoes before.’ It’s not difficult, she explains, and it’s well supported by a team from Elephant-Human Relations Aid.
In Namibia, free-roaming elephants regularly get into trouble when they go looking for water, an oft-contested resource. The non-profit works with local communities to facilitate peaceful coexistence and provide tailored solutions, from alternative water sources to elephant corridors. Edsell’s work has always supported conservation, so it made sense that it would also be a focal point of her own tours — for the benefit of both the travellers and the elephants. ‘We’re actively tracking the elephants, but we’re also making a big financial contribution that funds their ongoing work in the villages,’ she says. ‘Whenever I’ve travelled, I’ve always thought about how I can give back to the places I visit, or about local issues — whether environmental or humanitarian — and what I could do to help.’
Since that very first trip, Edsell has led new groups through the jungles of Peru, the mountains of Scotland and the waters off Mozambique. At the same time, other tour operators have reported that interest in women-only trips is on the rise. Edsell says she’s noticed how much more easily female travellers drop their guard when they’re in a women-only group, making it easier to build connections. ‘Usually on the first day, everyone’s a bit cagey — especially when there are no toilets. But by day three, we’re all crouching next to each other and laughing. We’re all a bit dirty, and we’re all the same.’
Find out more at cathadventure.com
