April had the park to ourselves

Missoula, Montana·Apr 2025

I travelled alone, which I was nervous about, and I went in April, which everyone told me was the wrong month.

Nine days and I counted eleven other vehicles. Eleven, in nine days. It rained most afternoons for an hour and then stopped and the light afterwards was the best I have ever photographed in. The grass was long and green and everything in it looked fat and unbothered.

On being a solo traveller: I was never made to feel like an odd number. My guide, Emmanuel, ate with me when I wanted company and left me alone when I did not, and he worked out which was which faster than most people I know. He also spent an hour and a half positioning the vehicle for a leopard I would have driven straight past, and then said nothing while I took two hundred photographs of it.

The single-supplement was real and I paid it. It was worth it. I would tell any woman travelling on her own that this was among the easier trips I have taken, not the harder ones.