Ida Pfeiffer was an Austrian housewife who, at the age of 45, decided to hang up her apron, sell her property, and travel the world. We are talking about the year 1842, when it was far from usual or easy for a woman to travel the world alone. Even so, Pfeiffer went around the world twice and was the first European woman to travel to the interior of the island of Borneo. She also became a successful writer as she wrote about her adventures and misadventures as a courageous traveler.
Ida was born in Vienna into an upper-middle-class merchant family and, during the first years of her life, was educated by her father together with her seven siblings, like any other child, playing sports, reading travel journals, and dreaming of traveling to distant countries.
But little Ida's dreams were short-lived as her father died prematurely and her mother traded travel journals for piano and sewing. To escape the poor relationship with her mother, Ida agreed to a marriage of convenience with a lawyer who was 24 years older.
In 1837, her mother died and, thanks to the inheritance she received, she was able to finish educating her two children and, at the age of 45, began to travel the world. Since it was unthinkable that a woman would want to travel the world alone at that time, Ida Pfeiffer said she was going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and traveled to Pale,stine, Constantinople, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, Damascus, and Alexandria until she reached Cairo.
From there she traveled by camel across the desert to the Sue Isthmus and returned to Vienna via Sicily, Naples, Rome, and Florence. She had spent 9 months traveling and was persuaded by friends to publish a travel diary. She did so anonymously with the title: "Reise einer Wienerin in das Heilige Land" (Journey of a Viennese woman to the Holy Land), and it became a great success for the public.
In April 1845, she undertook a new journey northward via Prague, Leipzig, Hamburg, and Kiel to Copenhagen, from where she left for Iceland. After a rough crossing in a sailing ship, she disembarked again in Copenhagen and traveled in the direction of Christiania (the present-day city of Oslo).
Returning to Vienna 6 months later, she published a new book, "Reise nach dem skandinavischen Norden und der Insel Island im Jahre 1845" (Journey to the Scandinavian North and the Island of Iceland in 1845).
Between 1846 and 1848, she completed her first trip around the world in which she visited countries such as Brazil, Chile, Tahiti, China, India, Persia, Armenia, and Greece, among others. In 1850, Ida published a three-volume account of this journey in "Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt" (A Woman's Journey Around the World).
Despite being 54 years old, Ida decided to undertake a second round-the-world voyage in 1851. She traveled as far as South Africa, then to Singapore, Indonesia, and islands such as Borneo, where she was the first white woman to make an inland route. She sailed across the Pacific and arrived in California in 1853.
From there, she traveled to Ecuador, Peru, and reached North America via Panama, and returned to London in 1854. She published a total of 4 volumes of her travel diary two years later under the name "Meine zweite Weltreise" (My Second Round the World). Ida Pfeiffer had become a very popular woman in Vienna thanks to her travels and her books.
In May 1856, Ida began what was to be her last voyage, bound for Australia. She embarked in Rotterdam for Mauritius, where she stayed for several months. In April 1857, she traveled to Madagascar. There, she was accused of espionage, imprisoned, and expelled from the island. Sick, feverish, and escorted by soldiers, Ida Pfeiffer was forced to cross 53 days of malaria-infested swampland to reach the coast.
In September 1857, back in Mauritius, she planned to continue her journey to Australia, but fell ill again and was forced to return to her hometown in September 1858. She died in Vienna within a month of the late effects of malaria she had contracted years earlier. The two volumes of the Madagascar voyage were published posthumously by her son Oscar in 1861.
