Traveling at 40+: Why Your Best Adventures Are Ahead (and How to Start This Year)

Last updated: 18 September 2026. Written by Maria Kamau (Mkay), ICF-Certified Travel Coach.

Hey there! Welcome back to Travel with Mkay. I’m Maria, most people call me Mkay, and I want to tell you something that took me most of my life to understand: the best travel of your life is not behind you at 40. It has not started yet.

I took my first flight in 1989, a teenage girl from a Kenyan high school on an exchange trip to Germany. I did not become a world traveler that day. I did not make a plan to see 100 countries. What happened is that one trip widened the map, and the next thirty-seven years were a series of small yeses. Kilimanjaro in 2012. A hot air balloon over Namibia on my 50th birthday. Pakistan’s northern mountains. Gabon, Congo, Sierra Leone, and, in August 2026, Sao Tome and Principe, my 100th country, on an ordinary Kenyan passport.

Most of the countries came after 40. Almost all of the ones that changed me did. So this article is not a pep talk. It is the case, with numbers and with practical steps, for why midlife is the best travel age you will ever have, and what to do in the next 90 days if you have been waiting.

What actually stops women from traveling

Every year since 2020, Solo Female Travelers runs the largest global survey of women who travel alone. The 2026 edition, updated on International Women’s Day, is the most honest picture I know of what holds women back and what sets them free. Three findings matter for anyone over 40:

• 58% of women who travel solo do it because they had nobody to go with. Not because they are unusually brave. Because they got tired of waiting. Every year, the survey notes, fewer women wait for others.
• The barriers for women who have never gone alone are cost (73%), safety (57%), having to book everything themselves (49%) and guilt about leaving loved ones (15%). And 17% simply did not know solo travel was an option for them. Read that one twice.
• Safety worries fall with experience: 72% of women with fewer than five solo trips worry about safety, against 62% of those with more than ten. Gen Z travelers worry more (82%) than Boomers (59%). Confidence is not a personality trait. It is a number that moves when you move.

Underneath all of it is the question I wrote about in “Who are you going with?“: for many of us, the real barrier is that we have spent years waiting for someone else to be ready. Children grow up. Careers change. Relationships change. Eventually the question becomes: what if I went anyway?

Why 40+ is the best travel age

1. You finally have the money, or the skill to make it stretch

At 25 I had time and no money. At 45 most of us have more of the second than we ever did, and the judgment to spend it well. Women make 82% of travel decisions worldwide, and the survey’s respondents were clear that the “higher cost of traveling alone” is a worry (68%) but not a wall: the answer is choosing destinations where a single room is KSh 3,000, not KSh 30,000. My budget travel Kenya guide and the getaways under KSh 10,000 exist precisely because a good trip has never required a big number.

2. You know what you like

Nobody at 45 needs to prove they can survive a 14-bed hostel dorm or an 11 pm bus. You know whether you want a beach or a mountain, a museum or a market, four hours of walking or two. The survey’s top reasons for solo travel are the same in every age group and have not changed since 2020: freedom and flexibility (85%), escape from routine and responsibility (81%), rest and me-time (76%), and challenge (75%). Midlife is when you finally get to design a trip around those, and only those.

3. You have less to prove and more to notice

The trips I took in my twenties were about the list. The ones I take now are about the spiced meal at the base of the Ourika valley where I cooled my feet in the river, and the days I spent in Addis when everyone else was passing through. Slower travel is not a compromise for older bodies. It is better travel, and the body is just the excuse to do it.

4. You have already survived harder things

A woman who has raised children, built a career, buried a parent or rebuilt a life after a marriage ended has every skill that a wrong turn in Lisbon requires. On the Midlife Butterfly podcast I talked about this with Kena Siu: identity comes from doing, and even one small journey shifts how you see yourself. You are not learning courage from scratch. You are applying it somewhere new.

What genuinely changes, and how to plan for it

I will not pretend a fifty-something body is a 25-year-old body. Here is what is different, and what to do about each thing. None of it is a reason to stay home.

Your body

• See a doctor before a big trip. Blood pressure, sugar, the knee that clicks, the medication you will need three months of. Ask for a letter listing your prescriptions in their generic names; airport security and foreign pharmacies both understand it.
• Altitude, heat and long walks need a slower pace, not a veto. I summited Kilimanjaro in 2012, long past my twenties, with one slow breath and one careful step at a time. A 4-day Mount Kenya trek beats a 3-day one at any age, and even more after 45.
• Menopause is a travel-planning fact. Hot flushes in a humid climate, sleep that breaks in a new time zone, and a bladder that dictates the bus schedule. Pack for it: layers, a fan, electrolytes, and an itinerary with a bathroom every two hours. Nobody talks about this and everyone in our age group deals with it.
• Sleep is a booking criterion. A quiet room and a real bed are worth KSh 1,500 more a night. Book the room, not the dorm.

Your insurance

Premiums rise with age, though the bands usually start around 60 or 65 rather than at 40, and every pre-existing condition has to be declared or the policy is worthless. Buy the cover that pays for treatment and evacuation, not the one with the free luggage add-on. 57% of experienced solo travelers always buy insurance; be one of them. My insurance guide explains how to compare policies without being sold to.

Your money

• Set a trip fund with a name and a standing order, even KSh 5,000 a month. A named fund gets protected; “savings” gets raided.
• Price the trip in three tiers (bare, comfortable, treat) before you look at anything shiny. Most of my trips are the middle tier with one treat.
• Learn the two or three tools that cut costs in half: booking your own flights at the right time, using local transport, and eating where locals eat. The cheap flights guide is the place to start.

Your family

Guilt is the most respectable excuse in the world and it stopped 15% of the women in the survey. Here is what I have seen work: a short first trip (five days, not five weeks), a written handover for the household, a daily call at a fixed time, and a return date everyone knows. Partners and adult children cope. Younger children remember, years later, that their mother was a woman who went places. I wrote about the version of this that keeps women stuck in “This season of your life is not for postponing joy.”

Your safety

The habits are the same at 45 as at 25, and you are better at them: arrive in daylight, share your location, use apps not street taxis at night, keep the phone away on the pavement, trust the discomfort in your stomach and leave. Older travelers use more safety devices, not fewer (59% of Boomers carried an anti-theft bag in 2025, against 32% of Gen Z), and that is not fear. It is competence. My solo female safety guide covers Kenya specifically and the principles travel anywhere.

Where to go first

The single most consistent finding in six years of that survey is that experienced women recommend a first solo trip in your own country (16%, the top single answer) or somewhere easy nearby, before Europe (62% pick it for a first international trip, with the UK, Italy and Spain on top every year). For a Kenyan woman that means the map starts at home:

1. A weekend within three hours of Nairobi. Naivasha, Nanyuki, Kereita, Machakos. One matatu or one drive, two nights, a base you do not move from. My under-KSh-10,000 list is built for exactly this.
2. The coast alone. The SGR to Mombasa, three nights in Diani or four in Lamu. Kenya’s coast is where a lot of women discover they like their own company.
3. A safari you plan yourself. The budget Mara guide proves it can be done for less than a fancy dinner in Nairobi.
4. One neighbor. Kigali is the easiest first foreign city in Africa: visa-free, clean, calm, a weekend from Nairobi. Then Zanzibar, then Dubai, then the world.

Every one of those has a guide on this site with 2026 prices. Pick one. Do not pick four.

The 90-day plan

This is the plan I use with the women I coach, and it works because it is small.

Days 1 to 7: decide. One place. One date, written in a diary, not “March-ish”. One budget number. Tell one person who will ask you about it.

Days 8 to 30: remove the excuses. Passport valid? If not, renew now. Yellow fever card? Get it. Doctor’s appointment booked. Insurance quotes requested. Family conversation had, calmly, with dates.

Days 31 to 60: commit money. Book the non-refundable thing, usually the flight or the train. Nothing makes a trip real like a booking that costs you to cancel. Book the first two nights’ accommodation. Set up the trip fund if you have not.

Days 61 to 90: prepare, lightly. Pack once, a week out, and remove a third. Download offline maps. Write the household handover. Read one guide, not twelve. Then go.

This sequence has turned “one day” into a date for the women I have coached. The trip is rarely the hard part. The decision is.

What I know now that I did not know at 40

• Nobody is coming to give you permission. The permission is yours to take, and it feels strange for about a week.
• Confidence is downstream of action. You become someone who travels by traveling, one journey, then the next.
• Solo does not mean lonely. It means you decide what today looks like. Some of my best friendships started at a shared table on a trip I took alone.
• Most people do not regret the trip. They regret the waiting. I wrote a whole piece on it: “Most people don’t regret the trip, they regret waiting.”
• Kenya is where I learned to travel, on coastal buses and overnight trains, long before I had a stamp in my passport. Your own country counts. It always did.

If you want company on the decision

Some women read this, pick a date, and go. Some want a conversation first, with someone who has stood at the same fork: the fear, the money, the family, the “am I too old for this”. That conversation is what I do. A free check-in chat is where we look at your travel dreams and what is actually in the way; if you want more, my coaching options range from support for one specific trip to a set of sessions that make travel a lifestyle rather than an escape.

You have waited long enough. Your best adventures are not behind you. They are on the other side of one small decision, and I would love to help you make it.

Frequently asked questions

Is 40 too old to start traveling?

No. It is the age most women finally have the money, the clarity and the permission to go. I started traveling seriously in my thirties and forties and reached my 100th country in my fifties. The 2026 solo female travel survey shows women of every age group traveling for the same reasons: freedom, a break from routine, self-care and challenge.

Is solo travel safe for a woman over 40?

It is as safe as your habits make it, and experience helps: the 2026 survey found safety worries fall from 72% among women with fewer than five solo trips to 62% among those with more than ten. Older travelers also use more precautions; 59% of Boomers carried an anti-theft bag in 2025. Start with a destination that is easy, plan your arrivals in daylight, and build up.

How do I travel if I have nobody to go with?

You go anyway, which is what 58% of women who travel solo do. Or you join a women-only group trip, which 21% of surveyed women planned to do in 2026 and which 76% of surveyed women said would make them more likely to book a solo trip. Both are legitimate ways to stop waiting.

Does travel insurance cost more after 40?

Premiums rise with age, usually in bands that start around 60 or 65 rather than at 40, and pre-existing conditions must be declared. The important thing is to buy cover that actually pays for medical treatment and evacuation abroad, which is what my insurance guide walks you through. 57% of experienced solo travelers always buy it.

What is the best first trip for a woman over 40?

Somewhere inside your own country or region with one flight or train, three to five nights, and a base you do not have to move from. 16% of experienced solo travelers recommend one’s own country for a first solo trip. For Kenyan women that means Diani, Naivasha, Kisumu, Lamu or a Mara safari before Bangkok or Lisbon.

How do I deal with the guilt of leaving my family?

Name it, plan around it and go. 15% of women in the 2026 survey said guilt about leaving loved ones stopped them traveling solo. A five-day trip with a clear handover, a daily call and a return date is not abandonment. Most families cope better than we fear, and most children remember a mother who did things.

What is travel coaching and do I need it?

Coaching is not booking. It is working through the fear, the money story, the family logistics and the plan with someone who has done it, so that ‘one day’ becomes a date. Some women need one conversation; some want four sessions. If you are reading this page for the third time, that is your answer.

Official sources and further reading

• Solo Female Travelers, 2026 Solo Female Travel Trends and Statistics updated 8 March 2026
• BBC Travel, Female-first travel: the ultimate guide March 2025
• Midlife Butterfly Podcast, episode 67 with Maria Kamau April 2026
• Travel with Mkay, 100 countries on one ordinary Kenyan passport August 2026