Gabby Beckford of Packs Light is the Queen of Solo Travel

Hitting the road on your own requires a lot of courage, and Gabby Beckford will inspire you to get it done. The self-proclaimed “queen of solo travel” built quite a following since she decided to become a full-time digital nomad and share her tips with the rest of the world.

Beckford fell in love with travel at a young age thanks to her parents. Her mother was a travel agent for over two decades, and they had to move a lot because her dad was an active-duty soldier, and she lived everywhere from California to Japan before she was ten.

“Our little family grew up no stranger to airports and new countries. It was instilled in me that travel was a way to learn about each other, learn about the world around us, establish confidence, and learn about ourselves, too,” explains Beckford on her blog Packs Light.

Beckford traveled a lot while she was still in school, embarking on a solo trip to Iceland at 17 and winning $70,000 in scholarships that founded her studies in Dubai. She took a full-time job as a quality engineer following her graduation and strategically used her paid time off to travel everywhere from Japan to South Korea.

She decided to travel even more in the aftermath of the global pandemic and built a huge following on TikTok and Instagram, visiting over 50 countries and 6 continents in the meantime.