So I might think I’m a pretty savvy diabetic traveller after having tackled Malawi, Swaziland, the USA, Canada, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, but that’s nothing in comparison to Alex Williams, a type 1 diabetic from Australia who has zigzagged all over the globe, and is planning to walk across the Sahara desert next year in the Marathon des Sables. Pretty impressive stuff.

Here’s what Alex has to say about travelling with diabetes…

1. Hello! Please could you introduce yourself – name, age, how long you’ve been diabetic?

Hi. My name is Alex Williams. I’m 52 years old and have lived with type 1 diabetes for 36 years.

2. Where have you traveled?

I’ve travelled all over the south east coast of Australia, from as far north as Townsville all the way down and around to Adelaide. I can put my hand on my heart and say that I’ve probably driven on every stretch of highway in the state of Victoria. I started travelling the minute I got my driver’s license at 18 and haven’t stopped since.

My international travel started 25 years ago when my soon-to-be wife took me to “meet the family” in New Zealand. I was blown away by the beauty of the North Island and caught the travel bug there and then. But how do you describe to someone who has never done it, the adventure and curiosity of seeing an airport in another country, and then the strangeness as you drive through the city for the first time?

I’ve been back to New Zealand once since then, but as we were staying with family, there wasn’t a lot of diabetes adventure involved.

Fifteen years ago I got a job in Saudi Arabia. I travelled there on my own for the first trip and shared a flat with another westerner for 12 months. Then my wife and children were able to come over to join me in Riyadh, where we lived for the next 4 years. Each year we would do an international trip somewhere. Sometimes it was back to Australia to visit with family in both Brisbane and Melbourne, and sometimes it was elsewhere. During this time we did a 4 week driving tour around Great Britain in a Kombi Campervan, driving almost as far north as John O’Groats and south to Southampton. We spent a week in London just enjoying the history, the culture and the sheer joy of being there. http://www.geocities.com/alex_of_oz/Saudi_pages/Pommy_trip.html

During this time we also did a 5 week driving trip around Western Europe, flying from Riyadh to Paris via Jeddah and then driving from Paris to Luxemburg, Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Switzerland and then back to Paris. We stayed in Paris for a couple of days, and then caught the overnight train to Rome, where we stayed for a week of walking. Many interesting things happened including nearly getting arrested in Rome. http://www.geocities.com/alex_of_oz/Saudi_pages/Europe_99.html

I also managed to squeeze in another trip from Riyadh to Glasgow, this time for business. The interesting thing about this trip was that the night that I was flying into London before swapping to the plane for Glasgow, was also the night that Princess Diana died in Paris. My whole trip to Glasgow was over-shadowed by Diana’s death. I caught the train from Glasgow to London on the day of Diana’s funeral. That was an experience that I will never forget. The flowers arranged around the gate to St James Palace were truly incredible.

Travel took a back seat for a few years until about 2005, when I travelled to Bangalore in India for four and half months. This was a business trip in which I was meant to train them up so they could take my job. I still have my job. This was also the first time I had travelled in a third world country, so the food, hygiene and medical side of things were interesting. All went well with few dramas. While there I wrote a number of stories, with one focusing pretty much on my being diabetic – http://www.geocities.com/alex_of_oz/Bangalore_stories/Missive_8.html

There is another story that talks about the time we were travelling between cities and I started to have a hypo. That can be found in the India stories here – http://www.geocities.com/alex_of_oz/Story_index.html

The last trip I did, which was 3 years ago, was a 4 week trip back to Bangalore. This time the food caused me some difficulty because I was staying in a serviced apartment where I was reliant on other people providing and cooking the food. You don’t realize how reliant we become on our “western” time schedule until you are living in a third would country where time is much more flexible.

3. What was the most difficult thing about traveling with diabetes?

For me, the most difficult thing about travelling with diabetes is keeping track of where there is a reliable source of food, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. For example, lying down on the public seating benches at Rome airport to stay until the first plane left in the morning, only to discover with 2 minutes to spare that the food shop that we can see just across the walkway is not staying open all night as expected, but is about to close and won’t open again until the plane is airborne. And guess what? I don’t have any emergency food in my bags.

Another difficulty is the effect that the jetlag, time differences and physical and emotional stress has on the sugar levels. There is an underlying constant awareness that the sugar level can plummet at any moment, which is especially stressing when travelling by yourself. This happened to me while in a hotel in transit in Bahrain; the sugar plummeted and it took me 2 or 3 or 4 hours (see what I mean) to get it back. However that was not in time to catch the airport shuttle bus!

4. How prepared were you before you left?

I believe I have experienced most things a diabetic can experience while travelling, and learned from the experience. Yes, I have woken up in intensive care in hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia after having a massive hypo. I needed to go under a general anesthetic so they could put my arm back in place. I had managed to dislocate my shoulder while having a fit in the hypo.

I have found myself without food, and learned from the experience. I have found myself with nowhere clean to have my injection, and learned from the experience. I have been challenged by the customs officers in Jeddah airport when they saw my injection kit, only to be deflated when I told them “Sucre dam”, which means “sugar blood” in Arabic, which is their way of referring to diabetes. I learned from the experience.

And I’m sure I will learn more when I travel to Morocco and walk across the Sahara desert.

5. Do you have any hints or tips for diabetics who want to travel?

• Always carry a doctor’s letter
• Always carry extra insulin and equipment
• Always have emergency food with you that is robust
• Always know where food can be obtained
• Write lots of lists, to reduce the stress level and therefore the hit on sugar levels
• Always pack your medical kit and emergency food in your carry on luggage
• Maintain 2 medical kits; one for your carry on luggage and one for your suitcase
• So long as you plan properly, there is no reason why you can’t travel
• Finally, NEVER rely on airline food