Welcome to AllergyTravel.org. If you or a family member have allergies but also want to travel, this is the place for you! I was going to set it up as its own website, but I’m too busy travelling and enjoying life to do that right now. If it turns out that enough of you are interested in this information I’ll separate it from my personal blog later.
Safe Travel With an Allergy (or many)
Is it easy to travel with allergies? I’m not going to lie: it can be tricky. Especially if you have anaphylactic allergies. There is risk involved.
But now that the number of people with allergies has skyrocketed worldwide, and there are many other people with food restrictions, it’s probably no more dangerous in many parts of the world than it is where you live.
That said, to travel safely with an allergy, there are a few basics you should know. This part of the website will give you more information about what it takes to travel reasonably safely with allergies. My plan is to include real-world allergy travel experiences, advice from allergists and other experts, and information about products or services that can help.
Why Trust Tema?
I’ve lived with multiple allergies my whole life. Thanks to good hospitals and now things like EpiPens (they didn’t exist till I was in my 20s), it’s been a long life. When I was a kid, in the 1960s, few people had heard of allergies. Even those who had, figured that if a kid said she was allergic to something, that meant she didn’t like it — if she didn’t know it was in what she was eating, she’d be fine. That kind of logic led to me vomiting on a lot of people’s carpets at birthday parties, and more than a few trips to the hospital.
Despite this, my parents took me traveling internationally starting at age 3, and that love of travel never died. (The picture is my first passport photo). So far, I’ve traveled to or lived in 35 countries (11 of them for more than a month at a time)*.
* If you go by the list at https://travelerscenturyclub.org/countries-and-territories, where they count territories that are far away from the main country separately, I’ve been to 55 countries or territories.
Products & Services for Traveling With Allergies
AllergyTravel.org is not a “.com” because the goal isn’t to make money; its to inform and help people so they can enjoy travel despite the allergies. If I mention a product I haven’t tried personally, I’ll say so. I may get a small commission from products linked to on this site, but I’m not going to recommend something unless I really believe in it, even if that means fewer sales. (See Travel Allergy Cards, for example.)
What About You?
We all experience allergies differently, so I have to start with my own experiences. The readers of AllergyTravel.org need to hear from you too: your tips, your stories, your feedback. Please comment on posts, and subscribe to the newsletter so you’ll be informed any time there’s new information on the site. Tell your friends and family about it too. Thanks!
Tema
P.S. Americans write traveling with one l; the British use two. I’m Canadian. I could go either way. My fingers want to type the double l, but since this site is likely to have more American readers, I’ll try to use the single. (And if you double-ll Brits, Canadians, Australians and others prove me wrong about the readership, good on ‘ya! I can change the default spelling!)
