Asked at bus checkpoints whether her parents knew, Maisha Tasnim Sneha kept travelling alone

Maisha Tasnim Sneha says officials at bus checkpoints asked whether her parents knew she was travelling. The same question followed her on the journey from Bandarban to Dhaka and again at airport immigration. The Business Standard (TBS) published her account on October 9, 2026, in a feature on Bangladeshi women who travel alone, at home and abroad.

Asked at every checkpoint

Maisha grew up in Dhaka believing the world was harsh and hostile. She began exploring Bangladesh at university. Her first trip abroad, to Nepal, came in 2023, followed by Meghalaya and Ladakh, then Thailand and Sri Lanka with friends, and later solo trips to Nepal and Kenya.

At home, the calculation came first.

TBS describes her checking the quality of hotels, bracing to be overcharged for transport or food, and wondering how strangers would treat her, especially in places unaccustomed to tourists. Near Jaintiapur in Sylhet, local men at a waterfall asked why the young women had come and whether Maisha was married. Then came the checkpoints, where officials wanted to know if her parents were aware of the trip.

Her reading of that question is blunt. "It makes you realise that they are not seeing you simply as another person. They are seeing you first as an object of desire which has no autonomy," she said. That is her interpretation, and TBS gives no official reply to it.

Her response was practical. She started a small women's travel group, so that women could find companions and feel less self-conscious. "The only way to find space for women to travel is to claim that space. No one is going to simply give it to you," she said.

What the road taught, by the travellers' own account

Once, Maisha's phone stopped working for several days during a solo trip. She found her way around, sorted out the problem and did not fall apart, according to TBS. "I handled the problems, and nothing terrible happened," she said. "That gave me confidence that, whatever happens, I have the capacity to deal with it."

A scout loves a line like that and should distrust it. It is one person describing her own week, and TBS cites no study that measured whether solo trips build confidence. Shamsunnahar Leepi, a business system analyst at BRAC IT, gave a second TBS feature, published on October 11, 2026, a similar account. Her first solo trip was unplanned, after her travel companion cancelled, and she says it pushed her out of her comfort zone. "You are never the same after a big adventurous solo trip. You return with a lot more courage," she said.

Two self-reports agree. Neither is a trial.

The feature also lets its travellers complicate the picture. Shurovy Yeasmin, a solo female travel content creator, started travelling at around 19 and has visited 12 countries, nine of them alone. She says country roads have felt safer to her than Dhaka, where she recalls being harassed on public buses on her way to university. Rangamati is where she has felt safest, after 10 or 12 visits.

She also says the person to watch may be the one beside you. "If you face harassment there, surprisingly, it would be more likely to come from the person you travelled with," she said. It is one reason she prefers to travel alone, though she rarely does so after dark, and she does not believe that leaving Bangladesh means leaving risk behind.

Jhumka Chakma, from Khagrachhari, raises a different cost. She began travelling around 2016 and grew uneasy with how some travel groups approached the hills, using nature as a selling point while polluting and disturbing local people's privacy. "There is a difference between travelling to the hills and turning the hills into a business," she said. She left and started a small platform of her own. Few rules govern visitors' behaviour in such places, TBS notes, and not every group teaches basic etiquette.

Three women, one flight, one court rule

On August 8, 2026, Rifa Tamanna, Sohani Islam Samapti and Naznin went to Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka to fly to Nepal. According to their lawyer, Ishrat Hasan, the three are adults and friends with valid passports, no criminal cases and no court order restricting their travel. The Daily Star reports that they are involved with the Bangladesh International Mediation Society and were travelling as mediators to attend a conference.

The lawyer says they were asked why they were unmarried and whether their families had consented, then stopped at immigration without being given a reason. They lost money on tickets and other bookings. The women filed a complaint with the additional inspector general of police (immigration) on 31 August, a legal notice followed on 6 September, and the writ petition reached the High Court on 15 September.

On September 29, 2026, the court issued a rule asking why stopping three adult women from travelling despite valid documents should not be declared illegal. It also asked why guidelines should not be formulated so that adult women are not prevented from lawful foreign travel because they are unmarried, travelling without parents or guardians, or on similar gender-based grounds. The bench was Justice KM Kamrul Kader and Justice Fatema Anwar.

Everything here is the women's account, relayed by their lawyer. The Daily Star notes that it remains subject to the court process, and the reports we read carry no response from the immigration police.

The feature says Maisha and Farhana Farha, a community curator at Cinemata who was detained by immigration officials at the airport before a work trip to the Philippines, faced similar questions. The officials told her they were concerned for her safety.

Followers, searches and a forecast

Nobody can say how many Bangladeshi women travel alone. A 2022 study of 307 Bangladeshi solo travellers described the travel habits of Asian Muslim women as "sorely under-researched", TBS reports. We could not open that study itself, which sits behind a publisher's access wall, so the sample size and the quotation come from TBS's description.

Online communities are easier to count. As of 30 September 2026, Wander Woman had around 142,000 followers, The Female Travellers Network 108,000, and Vromonkonna 104,000. Vromonkonna says, by its own figures, that it has served more than 4,800 women, held over 300 events and run more than 10 skills programmes, among them cycling, driving, swimming and self-defence. Follower counts measure attention, not trips taken.

The industry is pointing the same way. TBS reports that Intrepid Travel says women now make up over half of its travellers, that its Women's Expedition range grew by 32% in 2025, and that 77% of those travellers joined trips solo. The figures come from the company, which sells the trips.

Search data adds a second signal. A separate TBS feature of October 11, 2026 says solo travel has hit peak search popularity on Google Trends in Bangladesh for the past two months. The same piece mentions a new label for the urge, "MeMooning", a honeymoon-inspired term for travelling solo. It also cites a projection by the market research firm Research and Markets that the global solo travel market will grow from $489 billion in 2025 to $1 trillion by 2031. A forecast from a firm that sells market research is a forecast, not a count of anyone's journeys.

The spotlight effect and the solitude researchers

The same feature turns to psychology. Solo outings may feel uncomfortable, it says, because people often imagine they are being watched. Psychologists call this the spotlight effect, in which people overestimate how much others notice them. A traveller checking into a hotel or dining alone may feel judged, while most people are likely too caught up in their own lives to notice. TBS names no study behind that description.

It also relays a Guardian discussion of the book "Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone". Psychologist Thuy-vy T. Nguyen, one of its authors, is quoted as saying solitude can provide rest and recovery from a biological perspective, while satisfying psychological needs such as freedom and autonomy. The Guardian, as TBS summarises it, notes that solitude is neither inherently good nor bad. Its effect depends largely on the individual.

That caution matters for the sunnier accounts. Going alone is not always about independence or self-care, TBS adds. For some, being alone in public triggers social anxiety, driven by the fear of being judged or pitied. Others travel for work, or because nobody was free to join them.

Shifat Rahman Susmoy, who works in bancassurance sales support at MetLife Bangladesh, calls his own motive "an anthropological curiosity". Muaz Abdur Rahim, a student at BRAC University, has travelled to 13 countries and all 64 districts of Bangladesh, and names cost as the biggest challenge, since expenses cannot be divided among fellow travellers.

For readers in the US and the UK, the Bangladeshi story is a reminder that the same trip carries different prices. Cost and nerves are shared. The questions about marital status and family consent at the gate are not, and they are what the High Court has been asked about.

The case is pending. The home secretary, the inspector general of police, the immigration police and the officials on duty at the airport were made respondents and given four weeks from September 29, 2026 to respond.

Sources

• How Bangladesh's female solo travellers are claiming the road, The Business Standard, Upama Adhikary, October 9, 2026