THIS week my eldest daughter set off to travel 5,500 miles across the world.

Carrying just a rucksack, she left for Heathrow to catch a plane to Myanmar - formerly known as Burma - the starting point for a month-long backpacking holiday in South-East Asia.

For me, a mother who is still not comfortable with either of my daughters staying out beyond 10pm, it is a huge worry.

My eldest daughter is 20 and has not lived at home since leaving for university two years ago, but I still fret about her and will do until she has safely landed back in England.

I know her trip will be character-building, I know that travel - particularly the do-your-own-thing sort - broadens the mind, I know it is inspiring and beneficial. But it can also be fraught with risk and danger and I can’t help focusing on that. The out-of-sight-out-of-mind thing doesn’t seem to work.

My daughter and her friend haven’t even booked accommodation, preferring to take pot luck. I’m loathe to admit it but I’d sleep easier if they were on a meticulously organised package tour with Thomas Cook.

York Press:

The joy of travel: Shwe Sandaw Pagoda, Myanmar

My husband, who spent much of his childhood flying alone to Africa where his family lived, is far more chilled about it. He even sat and tracked her plane on the internet. “Oh look it’s over Afghanistan,” he said. All I could think of was this great big, heavy lump of metal in the sky somewhere over a war zone, with my daughter in it. I couldn’t look.

I’ve begged her to keep in touch, and, to her credit, she has already sent me a handful of photos on Facebook. But that’s not always a comfort. Last year she trekked around China and posted some photographs showing her covered in cuts and bruises. She waited until she got home to tell me how, wearing a vest top, skirt and nothing on her head, she fell off a moped in the rain on a pot-holed road awash with speeding lorries, rickety carts, motorbikes and wandering animals.

I made her promise that, this time, she will steer clear of such modes of transport, but then there are all the other possibilities - bungee jumping, sky diving, white water rafting.

My eldest daughter is far more like my sister. She has backpacked down the entire length of Chile, and into the mountains of Bhutan. I prefer places that have an A to Z.

I really want my daughters to see the world, and part of me is envious - I’d love to see these places, although not all of them. My youngster daughter is heading off to Ibiza next week. Pool parties and pulsating nightclubs, what could be worse? And, yes, I am worried about her too - very.