World Hum Travel Corresponedent Julia Ross celebrates women who have blazed their own trails!

No, we likely wouldn’t publish a list of 10 inspirational male travelers. But men and women experience travel differently and face different obstacles in making travel a part of their lives, so let’s recognize a few women who have blazed the trail. Here, in no particular order, are 10 women—past and present—who have inspired others through their travels, whether by making the world a richer place, contributing to cross-cultural understanding, or simply pursuing their dreams.

1)  Maureen Wheeler

The Belfast-born cofounder of publishing powerhouse Lonely Planet, Wheeler and her husband Tony get our vote as the patron saints of independent travel. The couple wrote their first guidebook, “Across Asia on the Cheap,” at their kitchen table in 1973, detailing a six-month overland trip from London to Australia. It spawned a global empire. By 2008, what began as an effort to guide travelers across the Hippie Trail had yielded annual sales of more than six million books per year. Maureen still travels and writes. Lonely Planet guides have taken countless travelers faithfully through China, Thailand, New York City and beyond.

2) Martha Gellhorn

One of the great U.S. war correspondents of the 20th century, Gellhorn covered every major conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the U.S. invasion of Panama, describing the human toll of war for hungry American readers. She began her career in 1930s Spain, crossing over land, alone, with only a little cash and a knapsack. She went ashore as a stretcher-bearer with U.S. troops at Normandy; reported from hospitals and orphanages during the Vietnam War; and continued writing about the wider world well into her 80s. This wonderful Salon obituary provides testament to Gellhorn’s character—an agile and curious mind to the end.

3) Julia Child

She’s been gone a few years now, but oh, how her legacy lives on. Long before she became a beloved presence in America’s kitchens, Child satisfied a thirst for adventure by signing on as one of the first female spies in the OSS (forerunner to the CIA), which posted her to Sri Lanka and China during World War II. From there, she married into the Foreign Service, landed in Paris in 1948, enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu, and the rest is history. Child’s soufflés and sauces have inspired everyone from Emeril Lagasse to Alice Waters to striving culinary bloggers, revolutionizing American cooking along the way. For her life’s work as perhaps the best cultural ambassador ever to bridge two sides of the Atlantic, she received both the French Legion of Honor and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

4) Margaret Bourke-White

Another traveler who came into her own during wartime, this groundbreaking photojournalist seemed to be everywhere at once, snapping history’s great moments for Fortune and Life magazines. The first woman to be allowed to work in combat zones during World War II, Bourke-White photographed the conflict from all angles—North Africa, Italy, Germany and Russia—at times tagging along with Patton’s Army. After the war, she continued to ply her trade in places like India and Pakistan, where she recorded the violence of partition and took iconic photos of Gandhi, for which she remains well-known.

5) Annie Griffiths Belt

When Belt’s work goes on display at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, DC, where she works as a staff photographer, I make sure to visit. Israeli soldiers, Burmese refugees, Hong Kong opera stars—Belt’s images lay bare the joy and pain of the human experience and somehow bring the world a little closer. What’s even better: The woman’s got a dream job but also makes time to produce pictures for aid organizations like Habitat for Humanity. Her photo memoir, A Camera, Two Kids and A Camel, chronicles her travels to the world’s far outposts while toting two kids. As any working mom will tell you: Impressive.

6) Melinda Gates

When you’re one of the world’s wealthiest philanthropists, it’s probably easy to delegate. But former Microsoft executive Melinda Gates is out on the front lines, traveling to places like Kenya and Bangladesh to try to figure out what works in the fight against global poverty and disease. When the co-chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation travel together, it’s Melinda who connects with people in the tuberculosis ward, balancing her husband’s technocratic approach. But it’s her leadership in tackling some of the world’s great transnational threats that makes her a role model for anyone who cares about the plight of people beyond their own back yard.

7) Gertrude Bell

Was there anything this woman couldn’t do? Archaeologist, linguist, writer, diplomat—Bell was a renaissance woman to be reckoned with. One of Britain’s leading Arabists, she spent much of her life roaming the deserts of the Middle East and is credited as being the architect of modern-day Iraq. Interestingly, her letters from that country were being circulated at the Pentagon as recently as three years ago in an effort to make sense of post-invasion chaos.

Samantha Power

What to say about the brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, lawyer and academic? Power’s incisive reporting from places like Sudan, Bosnia and Rwanda has secured her place as one of the world’s leading thinkers on U.S. foreign policy, human rights and genocide. For the rest of us, outside the foreign policy stratosphere, her writing exposes thorny issues that lie at the nexus of politics and culture—issues we debate with ourselves and others as we travel. Power recently took a senior post on the National Security Council, but here’s hoping her journalism sees a second life. The woman’s still under 40, after all.

9) Naomi Duguid

It’s fitting that Canadian food writer Duguid met her husband, Jeffrey Alford, on a rooftop in Lhasa in 1985. She gave up the practice of law that summer, and the two decided to devote their lives to traveling across Asia, photographing and writing about food cultures for a series of award-winning cookbooks. A recent New Yorker profile dubbed Duguid and Alford “culinary geographers,” a role that’s showcased nicely in their most recent book, Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China. Just as the book describes the pulled noodles and flatbreads of China’s minority regions, it examines how these cultures are struggling to survive in the face of massive Han Chinese migration. Given their political bent, it’ll be interesting to see how Duguid and Alford treat their next subject: Myanmar (Burma).

10) Jo Rawlins Gilbert

Never heard of Ms. Gilbert? She appeared in a recent New York Times story on the first group of tourists to visit post-war Iraq. There she was, in the lede paragraph: A 79-year-old retired probation officer from California who said of Baghdad, “If it opened up, I wanted to go.” Googling Gilbert turns up her wonderfully written travel blog, in which she has chronicled recent trips to Mali (camping) and Jordan (digging among ruins) in a wry and practical voice. She’s been to Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, and says Kashmir and North Korea are on her list. Best of all, she provides cost and tour information for each trip, making even the wildest adventure sound perfectly within reach.

About the Writer:  Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications.

About World Hum:  World Hum is for the travel-addicted. It’s dedicated to harnessing the power of the internet to tell great travel stories—through writing, conversation, slideshows and video. Its focus is the geography of wanderlust.  Most travel publications focus on destinations, offering tips on where to go, where to stay, what to do. We started World Hum in May 2001 because we wanted to focus not only on destinations but also on the journey, on travel in the broadest sense of the word.  We don’t see travel only as a way to spend a couple weeks’ vacation every year. For us, travel is a way to see the world when we’re abroad, but also a way to see the world when we’re at home. Travel is a state of mind.  World Hum is dedicated to exploring travel in all its facets: how it changes us, how it changes the way we see the world, and finally, how travel itself is changing the world.