Travellers: Ida Pfeiffer

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Naomi Alderman looks at the mindset and legacy of Ida Pfeiffer, a woman who changed the very idea of travel, who is allowed to do it and why. Traditionally, travelling had always had a purpose – conquering, discovering, negotiating, pilgrimaging. Women were always accompanied by men – husbands, fathers, brothers, guardians. But in the mid-nineteenth century, a separated mother of two upped sticks and travelled twice around the world, all because she wanted to. Ida Pfeiffer went on bush expeditions with tiger hunters in India and had dinner with Queen Pomare IV of Tahiti. She spent her fiftieth birthday riding camels through Iran. So many people must have yearned for this kind of adventure, thought about it, but never turned the idea into reality. Pfeiffer made it happen. But what was so different about her thinking? Special thanks to John van Wyhe, historian of science at the National University of Singapore and author of Wanderlust: The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer, the First Female Tourist (National University of Singapore Press, 2020). Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.