"I'm the kind of person that will go to Sri Lanka, rent a tuktuk by myself and drive around for three weeks, or I will bike in Timor-Leste and go off for two weeks", Janet Newenham tells me. "So it was very strange for me to suddenly be – and this is the truth – organising group tours when I hate group tours.
"But I really get it now."
Newenham is the mind behind Janet's Journeys, an adventure travel company that sees Newenham escort up to 15 people on trips lasting up to 10 days, immersing them in the culture and in what is, according to Newenham, an almost ready-made best friend group.
In just a year and a half, Newenham has led roughly 160 people across the world, visiting seemingly remote and relatively lesser known countries such as Uzbekistan and Iraq.
Later this year she will guide a group to Antarctica, an ambitious trip that includes four days at sea, lectures on the environment and following in the footsteps of explorers.
She acknowledges that her success comes down to a few factors, most to do with her own experience and some to do with the post-pandemic world we're living in.
With years spent working as a travel journalist with Lonely Planet and The Irish Times, as well as working in marketing and blogging for eight years, Newenham built a wealth of contacts to draw from. She's also a fervid solo traveler: "I went sailing around Europe, or I would go work - I worked in an orphanage in Belarus when I was 16 - or I did a year in Africa when I was 18.
"It gave me such a thirst to discover new places, meet new people, learn that the world is so much bigger than what we know in Ireland. And also to come back always and appreciate how lucky we are in Ireland."
What technically started the company, however, was Instagram.
After a solo trip to Iraq in August 2021 – as one of the first tourists to visit the country after years of conflict – Newenham received messages from followers asking if she would ever organise a group trip back there. After deciding to bite the bullet, Newenham sold out three trips to Iraq.
The pandemic, with its lockdowns and restrictions, has certainly gifted many of us with a broader appetite for experiences, Newenham notes. "They were told for almost three years that they couldn't travel, and now that they can, they're like, I don't want it to go to Spain or France or America."
What sets Janet's Journeys apart, however, is the community. These trips appeal to people who maybe aren't on the exact same path as their peers, for one reason or another.
"It's essentially people whose friends have most likely got boyfriends, have girlfriends, boyfriends, have gone off, got married, maybe had kids, working their way up their careers, whatever. And these girls are all quite successful. They're all also working up their careers. Most are making good money, they still want to travel, but they don't have anyone to travel with."
The groups are 99% women and 99% Irish, she adds, which is part of the appeal: "It means that they can go back then to Dublin or Cork, whoever, and they're guaranteed reunions." None of this 'staying in touch over email' and fizzling out malarky.
With her journalist background, it's clear that Newenham appreciates the importance of doing your research, especially when it comes to using it to connect to locals rather than othering them. "I don't think my trips would be what they were if we didn't have we have three guides on each of our trips", she says.
"Anyone we meet on the streets or anyone we meet at Hatra or Babylon or an ancient site who maybe starts crying or shows us they have one arm or something, straight away, we get their story. If you don't have a translator or guide with you, you just think, oh, I wonder why that man has one arm. And you walk past it."
Solo traveling has become a totemic example of – specifically female – freedom, and there is a thriving global community of female solo travelers eager to share their tips and spread the good word about solo travel. Those tips are necessary in many cases, of course, something that Newenham acknowledges. There is an element of fear of the unknown in trips like these.
"Everyone is nervous going there", she says. "And you can't shed those preconceptions that they have. Most of them didn't tell their parents they were even going on trip. Some didn't even tell their husbands how worried they were.
"And then they come back and they're like, 'Best trip ever, I can't wait to go back to Baghdad!'
"Then you have to make it balanced as well because I'm not going to go and tell everyone Iraq is 100% safe", she adds. "It is safe as long as you obey the rules."
Part of addressing this fear is encouraging people to take up the mantle, too. Former group members have started to lead their own trips.
"I don't want the group trips to be my whole life", Newenham says. "I still want to solo travel sometimes and discover new places and go on extreme adventures. But I want to give people the chance to experience how amazing the trips are and meet the demand that's there, so I’m not recruiting past participants to lead the future trips, the community [is] building the community."
