Travel Narratives
People fascinate me. Perhaps that is why I love working as a GP. When I travel, I always want to ask questions and know what life is really like for everyone I meet. Sadly, I am not much of a linguist but I smile and gesticulate a great deal and make the effort to communicate. Given enough time, it is remarkable how connections can be made
I explore, try to understand and write about difficult issues including corruption, prejudice, exploitation, caste and poverty. I know that for some this makes uncomfortable reading and even risks demystifying and undermining the image some travellers have of the simple natural existence of the rural poor in emerging nations. Nevertheless I fervently believe these issues should be understood by all who travel so my aim is to present the facts as sympathetic engaging stories about real people. I am frustrated by the look-and-point approach to travel, but I hope I don't preach. I write of my adventures and enthusiasms and of colour and beauty so that my readers can enjoy my travel experiences as much as I do.
Travel Health Guides
Within minutes of arriving in the sleepy town of Khairpur in Sindh, I was faced with a medical crisis. I'd been qualified as a doctor for a few years but was new to expatriate life, and I was travelling with my firstborn, three-month-old son. A guy who was expecting to work with my husband announced that he needed to be evacuated because he was desperately ill. I introduced myself as a GP and offered help. Quickly I realised that my new friend was not suffering from some horrendous tropical pox but that he just had a nasty attack of sinusitis. It made him feel awful with frontal headache that recalled having a screwdriver rammed into his eyeball. Labelling it with a diagnosis made it less scary, though, and we found that the correct antibiotics were readily available over the counter in the local bazaar. By the next day my patient was well on the way to recovery.
That was the first time I really had to think about travel health. What this, my first real travel medicine ‘case’, made me realise is that even the calmest and most sensible of travellers will nearly always become disproportionately worried about themselves when taken ill. In my friend’s case, he didn’t know much about the local health service and didn’t know where he could find a doctor he could trust. He just wanted to get home to his friendly British GP. That experience showed me how liberating and empowering information can be and motivated me to start writing accessible straightforward travel health advice. I began work on a manual that was distributed amongst expatriate engineers, and soon after wrote my first travel health feature for Wanderlust magazine. It was - of course - on diarrhoea.
Your Child Abroad: a travel health guide
Wonderful - took a lot of worry out of travelling with a baby This book is an excellent reference book to take on any holiday when you are travelling with babies or small children. We took it to Nepal with us when we took our 7 month old baby, Jamie, and it provided to be an invaluable source of information and advice. It is worth reading before you travel as it has useful tips on what to take and what to avoid. It is clearly laid out and well written so that any concerned parent would find it useful. It has excellent checklists that you can use to determine if the symptoms your child has are serious in any way and provides some excellent advice. Every time my husband was worrying about any health issues I would tell him to read THE book! I would highly recommend it to any parent travelling especially if they are travelling to a remote destination such as within Asia, Africa or Latin America. We still use it now when our son gets ill - one of the best health advice books I have come across - one of a kind!
s.l.parker (UK)
Under a Himalayan Sky: A Story of Love, Loss and Learning to Live
I have read an early draft of this book and found it incredibly moving and beautiful
Lorna
50 Camels and She's Yours
What an excellent book - full of adventurous amazing stories. Highly recommended. I really enjoyed reading it.
SE
A Glimpse of Eternal Snows
This book was also a wonderful travelogue of Nepal. The family did some inspiring treks with all very young children in tow. You realise that nothing is impossible. It was funny and enlightening to read her descriptions of the different Nepalese people, their caste structure and different racial tensions. She describes their simple but very impoverished lives with compassion. Their bleak medical system and very strange approach to western medicine mixed with local healing customs was both amusing and sad. Wilson-Howarth was totally shocked and frustrated by the lack of interest in preventative medicine locally. In turn, the Nepalese were often shocked at how the British family lived. They often wandered in and out of their home to check them out. The concept of privacy and ownership were very wavy. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It took the reader on both a spiritual and physical armchair journey.
jenny hogan's blog