The ship dutifully ferried us in grand -- at least for a couple of college kids -- style from New York to Southampton. But from the time we docked, the trip was doomed.

Bill and I never dated and planned to sleep in single-sex hostel dorms, but the trip didn't sit well with his girlfriend, Bambi. Add in differing interests and wildly disparate cash scenarios -- I was counting every quarter; Bill had an open-draw account -- it was no surprise that less than a week in, Bill announced he was bailing. Our copy of Let's Go Europe went with him.

Which is how I found myself perched tearfully in front of the already-filled youth hostel in Munich wondering how I was going to find a place to sleep that night. And worse, how I would survive before heading off to school three weeks hence? Within minutes, I was joined by four other college kids -- a Brit, two Germans and an Italian, all lads -- also without a place to stay. Before long we'd rented a dorm room in a local cheap hotel and headed off to the Hofbrau for the beer that would help us bridge the language gap.

Surviving that awful first moment alone gave me the courage to go on -- not that I had alternatives. For the next three weeks I wandered about the continent, pairing up with a brother and sister from California for a visit to Paris, traveling alone to the Heidi-esque mountains of Switzerland, then heading back through the Alps to catch up with a lad -- another, better Bill -- I'd met in a youth hostel for the train ride to Italy.

If I was innocent, well, so were the late 1970s. Still today I find I bond easily with like souls on the road, though now, as then, I keep my wallet under wraps and my back to the wall. I like to see what's coming.

ASIA-BOUND

Young, female, alone --

and (mostly) fancy free

For years after that I traveled alone -- first to Hong Kong and China in the years when Mao suits were de rigeuer, then to India and Nepal, then to Bangkok. Few friends had the time or interest to invest their precious vacation weeks in such faraway places. Their idea of a break was a week in the islands at a resort with frilly umbrella drinks. Mine was something, well, a little different.

Not that I had the cash for jetsetting. Born without a trust fund, I resorted to a suitcase filled with those Ramen noodles, lodging at YWCAs, bus rides in lieu of taxis and the budget section of a Lonely Planet guide. Pop culture of the 1980s fell into the void; when my TV died, I took the money designated for a new one and bought a ticket to London.

Frequent flier miles became dear friends. Don't let anyone tell you using them is impossible; mine have taken me around the globe almost a dozen times. No, the flights aren't always direct, and sometimes I've been forced to overnight in cities I could have bypassed. But these are minor inconveniences when compared with the glories of, say, the Taj Mahal.

This line of thinking landed me one putrid July evening in 1987 in New Delhi, best seen in the dead of winter but acceptably cheap in the dog days. At 29 I had no idea what I was getting into -- and I don't mean the sandbagged checkpoints from the airport manned with soldiers wielding submachine guns, the inevitable hassles facing a young woman walking alone even when draped to the ankles, the heart-wrenching poverty of a sea of beggars or the long wait at the central bank, where accounts were still logged in giant ledgers rather than by computer.

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