Mary Jane Walker is a writer of historically well-informed travel stories that come with an autobiographical flavour. Mary Jane is a solo woman traveller who travels with no plans, just using intuition. She suffered a tragedy in her personal life and sought refuge through hiking and travelling the world.

Mary Jane first experienced world travel in an unusual way, as part of the crew on a Chinese junk named La Dame de Canton, the first to be built in the old way in decades. La Dame sailed from Canton, now Guangzhou, to Paris.

After only six weeks on the boat, Mary Jane found herself in the US military base of Diego Garcia, in which the junk sought refuge with ripped sails and water contaminated by salt.

Just as in the old days of exploration by sail, the voyage took a couple of years to complete, with many stops along the way for fresh water and supplies, and, yes, for repairs as well.