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
The updated and expanded second edition of the classic traveling parents' guide Your Child Abroad covers everything from tropical jungles to a visit to Europe, offering tips on how to handle both minor problems and emergencies and including the latest medical updates for countries and problems. From handling a child's allergy problems overseas to new antimalarials and a regional risk analysis. Your Child Abroad provides plenty of precautions and risk assessments to make for informed parents.
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
The Essential Guide to Travel Health
“This clear concise manual explains how to avoid the icky side effects of travel”
Best Title Award from Big World Magazine (Pennsylvania)
Lemurs of the Lost World
“the finest travel book thus far written about Madagascar”
Dervla Murphy in the Times Literary Supplement, London
A Glimpse of Eternal Snows
I was greatly relieved to find [that this book is] completely unsentimental yet at the same time very moving... The most powerful impression that remains is of the great vibrancy of Nepal and its people... The prose is consistently good and at times quite exquisite. It seems a very bold thing to write a book which is simultaneously a family memoir, a travel book, a social observation of a poor country, a natural history and an adventure story. Jane has managed to do so outstandingly well.
Harry Goode, Cambridge Writers