Gloria Apara, known to her followers as Nomadic Chica, wakes before the sun in Ubud. The first thing she does is not reach for her phone but for the small leather journal she keeps in her sarong bag. She writes three lines: one thing she’s grateful for, one intention for the day, and one memory from yesterday’s walk through the rice terraces. This ritual, she explains, anchors her before the world floods in. “Solo travel can feel like drinking from a fire hose,” she once told me over a cup of ginger tea. “I need that quiet sip first.”
Her morning unfolds slowly. By 6:30 a.m., she’s on the yoga mat in the open-air pavilion of her guesthouse, a simple wooden structure surrounded by frangipani trees. She follows no fixed sequence — instead, she lets her body guide the stretches. A few sun salutations, a long hold in pigeon pose, and five minutes of silent sitting. “I don’t force discipline,” she says. “I just listen.” Afterward, she walks barefoot to the nearby warung for a bowl of bubur injin — black rice pudding with coconut milk and a sprinkle of cinnamon. She eats without a book or phone, watching the village women arrange offerings of banana leaves and flowers on the temple steps.
This is the rhythm Gloria has cultivated over years of solo travel: slow, intentional, deeply connected to place. She doesn’t pack her day with sights. Instead, she picks one experience and lets it breathe.
Morning Exploration: The Market as a Living Museum
Today’s chosen experience is the Ubud Market, but not the tourist stretch on Jalan Raya. Gloria heads to the local market on Jalan Goutama, where farmers sell jackfruit, turmeric root, and baskets of tiny red chilies. She carries a reusable bag and a small amount of Indonesian rupiah — no haggling, just respectful exchange. She stops at a stall selling woven coconut-leaf baskets and learns from the vendor, a woman named Ibu Wayan, that the patterns indicate which temple ceremony they’re for. Gloria takes notes in her journal, not for a blog post, but because she genuinely wants to remember.
She buys a ripe mango and a piece of palm sugar wrapped in banana leaf. “I never plan meals when I travel solo,” she says. “I let the market decide.” This approach — trusting the local rhythm — is something she learned after a stressful trip to Lisbon years ago, when she tried to follow a strict itinerary. “I was exhausted. Now I travel like a cat: eat when hungry, rest when tired, explore when curious.”
Midday Pause: A Room with a View and a Book
By 11 a.m., the heat settles over Ubud like a heavy blanket. Gloria returns to her guesthouse, a small family-run property with only four rooms. She showers with cold water — a luxury here — and settles onto the balcony with a book. Today it’s a collection of essays by Pico Iyer, but she also travels with a dog-eared copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. “I know it’s cliché,” she laughs, “but some books are cliché because they’re true.”
She spends an hour reading, then another hour doing nothing — just watching the clouds gather over the valley. “Solitude is a muscle,” she says. “You have to exercise it without guilt.” This is a lesson she shares often with her readers, especially women who feel pressure to be constantly productive on the road. She encourages them to book a room with a balcony or a window that faces something green. “Even if it costs a little more, it’s your sanctuary.”
For lunch, she prepares a simple meal from her market finds: sliced mango with a squeeze of lime, a handful of roasted cashews, and a glass of water infused with lemongrass from the garden. She eats slowly, noticing the texture of the fruit, the sound of the geckos chirping in the ceiling.
Afternoon Discovery: A Walk Through the Rice Terraces
At 2 p.m., when the sun softens, Gloria sets out for the Tegalalang Rice Terraces. She avoids the main viewpoint where selfie sticks cluster and instead takes a side path that winds down into the paddies. The green is almost electric. She walks barefoot on the narrow irrigation ridges, feeling the cool mud between her toes. Farmers nod as they pass, carrying baskets of seedlings. She stops to watch a dragonfly land on a rice stalk.
“This is why I travel alone,” she says quietly. “No one is waiting for me to finish looking.” She takes a few photos with her compact camera, but mostly she just stands there, breathing. She remembers a similar feeling during her solo trip to Japan, where she spent an entire afternoon in a bamboo grove near Kyoto. “Some experiences can’t be shared without losing their intimacy,” she reflects. “You have to let the place touch you directly.”
By 4 p.m., she’s back in town, stopping at a small coffee shop that roasts its own beans. She orders a kopi tubruk — the traditional Balinese style with coarse grounds and palm sugar — and sits at a table by the window. She pulls out her journal again, this time to sketch the outline of a leaf she picked up. “Drawing forces me to see,” she says. “Photography is fast; drawing is slow. And slow is what I’m after.”
Evening Wind-Down: A Balinese Blessing and a Simple Dinner
As dusk falls, Gloria walks to a nearby temple for the evening prayers. She doesn’t enter the inner sanctum — she’s not Hindu — but she sits on the outer steps, watching the women in lace kebayas place offerings of rice and flowers. The air fills with the scent of incense and frangipani. She closes her eyes and lets the chanting wash over her. “I don’t understand the words, but I understand the feeling,” she says later. “That’s what travel does — it teaches you to listen beyond language.”
Dinner is at a small family-run restaurant that serves nasi campur with a dozen tiny bowls of vegetables, tempeh, and sambal. Gloria eats with her hands, as is customary, and the owner’s daughter shows her how to mix the sambal with rice. She tips generously and writes down the recipe in her journal. “I cook this dish when I’m homesick for Bali,” she admits. “It’s my way of bringing the journey home.”
Back at the guesthouse, she lights a mosquito coil and climbs onto the balcony. She reads a few more pages, then writes one final line in her journal: “Today I learned that slow is not lazy. It is the most radical act of presence.” She turns off the lamp at 9 p.m., the night sounds of Ubud — crickets, frogs, distant gamelan — lulling her into a deep, untroubled sleep.
Gloria’s day is not extraordinary by travel-blog standards. There are no helicopter rides or private chefs. But for the women who follow her — many of them contemplating their own first solo trip — it is a blueprint for traveling with integrity. She shows that a day can be rich without being full, and that the best souvenirs are the ones you carry in your senses: the taste of palm sugar, the feel of mud between your toes, the sound of a language you don’t understand but somehow feel.
