Travelling with autism

Good evening. A diagnosis of autism in her early twenties came as something of a relief to our writer Allie Mason. Experiences she’d had on holidays in the past finally began to make sense.
A meltdown in Bologna because a pizza was sold in slices, instead of the whole pizza she’d imagined; the way she preferred to sit quietly in a tent rather than join a chaotic campsite playground as a child; how she couldn’t stand the touch of grass or sand as a toddler.
“Autistic people often grapple with sensory, social and communication challenges,” she writes. Relentlessly busy places can be terrifying for those predisposed to sensory overwhelm, and being confronted with the unexpected and changes to plans can be challenging, she explains.
But rather than being deterred from travelling, Allie started taking measures to help her to cope and began learning how to adapt holiday plans to accommodate her needs. “I now have a self-made kit for mitigating sensory overwhelm: sunglasses, noise-isolating earplugs, noise-cancelling headphones, a fidget toy or two and a safe food to snack on.”
She even wrote a book, The Autistic Guide to Adventure, to introduce younger readers from the autistic community to a variety of different outdoor activities, and suggest how to best approach them.
Her most recent trip to Tromsø in the Arctic Circle was a dream - the long hours of darkness and cold temperatures soothing, the landscapes quiet.
“Given that travel is something I treasure, it’s a relief to realise that my ability to do it is not limited by being neurodivergent,” she writes. “On the contrary, I truly believe some of my many travel experiences have been – and will continue to be – enhanced by the fact that my brain works on a different wavelength.”