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Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

“You’re going across the world by yourself? Are you sure?”

You’ve heard it before, right? Someone who means well and tries to talk you out of traveling solo, mentioning all kinds of things that could go wrong.

They can be pretty convincing, focusing heavily on the negative – but completely forgetting that there are so many more positives that come from travel. What about all of the things that could go right?

There are things that only solo female travelers get to experience (things that just don’t happen when you’re traveling with someone else). It’s like a club that almost anyone can get into but few know about. But for those of us who have done it, we know that it’s not as scary as we thought, and much more rewarding than we ever imagined possible.

Traveling the world solo has taught me many lessons and made me realized there are some truths you only learn when you travel the world solo:

It’s way more exciting to try a new food on the other side of the world – and find that we absolutely love it – than it is to go to a swanky restaurant back home.

Having a car was fantastic to hop from one beach to another, to buy fruit at the market or stop at a small local warung (restaurant) at an intersection to enjoy homemade food: nasi campur (fried tuna, spinach, beef cubes, vegetable curry, fried tofu on a bed of rice), sate lilit (spiced minced meat on a stick), Betutu (roasted poultry dish)… and a cold Bintang beer, juice and shakes!

We also visited the Ulu Watu Temple, which was built in the 11th century on top of spectacular cliffs to honor the spirits of the sea. It’s a wonderful walk on the edge of the cliffs, flanked by Balinese statues, and the views over the endless swells of the Indian Ocean are almost spiritual. We attended the Kecak Fire Dance, a colorful and exciting cultural show at Ulu Watu’s cliff-top amphitheater. A local prince is sent to exile following an evil trick by his stepmother. But with the help of Monkey King Hanoman and his monkey troops, the prince eventually comes back and is reunited with his lover.

However, each has their own subjective means of ranking sites, using everything from Alexa scores, Twitter followers, Facebook likes, estimated traffic, inbound Google links and even subjective design criteria.

I understand that just because a site gets a high number of unique visitors doesn’t mean it’s the highest quality site. There are plenty of excellently written, well-designed, engaging sites that may not have high traffic numbers.

My intention was not to create a list of the best, or the most useful, or the most professional travel blogs. I simply wanted to create the most accurate list of the most visited blogs. Just as the movie weekend box office results are reported every week, I simply wanted to create an unbiased, objective list of the most visited travel blogs for research purposes.