Travelling to a new continent and undertaking a journey is often the most fundamental aspect of colonial and postcolonial literatures, especially in the genre of the novel. This article seeks to address travel as an agent of transformation in relation to the transcultural predicament of female travellers in E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India (1924). By seeking a connection between gender and travel, the article demonstrates that the passage to India turns out to be a life-changing experience for the two women travellers, Adela Quested and Mrs Moore, who demonstrate different travel motives, expectations, and goals as compared with their male counterparts. By going beyond the discussion of the novel as a study in anti/colonialism and the impossibility of East meeting West, I set out to examine how the position and status of women on the move in the early phase of twentieth-century literature helps to comprehend the crucial role of travel in shaping their private spheres, particularly the suppressed sides of their self and sexuality within the colonial, imperial, male dominated framework. Moreover, I also investigate how these female travellers despite challenging and contesting colonial engagements within their limited domain end up in only aggravating their transcultural predicament during and upon the end of their journeys. Hence, the article looks deeper into the role of female travellers in the novel as they struggle to define themselves in a new cultural and geographical landscape.