I get sick again in India

I got sick again last night. It was the fourth time I have gotten sick in six months in India.

This does not seem like such a bad track record. Each time I have only been really sick for about one night and then it has usually taken about two days to recover.

I had been feeling very 'blah' yesterday and the day before. Yesterday I went with a nice couple to visit the gompas at Likir, Alchi, and Basgo. My legs felt tired on simple walks and I kept dozing off in the taxi. I ate half my Indian lunch.

When we got back in the evening I checked the internet and suddenly I was not feeling so good. I had heartburn and a knot in my lower abdomen.

I went back to my guesthouse. I got mildly sick: I threw up my lunch and had a quick case of diarrhea. I went to sleep at 7.30pm and slept until 8.00am.

I feel much better today.

The other times I have gotten sick are: in Jodhpur I worked all day in an air-conditioned internet cafe and didn't eat or drink much. I took an auto-rickshaw back to the guesthouse and guzzled down a bottle of water. When I got back I got sick. But the next morning I felt good enough to travel to Udaipur. I looked at the bottle of water; it was dated six months before. I had bought it at a little streetside stall; who knows how long it had been sitting in the heat?

In Bikaner I got sick. I had diarrhea for two days. All of my muscles ached. I curled up on my bed and waited. I felt like crawling under the bed. It was 45C (117F) outside. At the end of the second day I felt better. I had started to feel a little funny in Jaisalmer, before traveling to Bikaner. In Jaisalmer I had gone on a camel trek, where the food had been cooked with water from local cisterns. Also, I was convinced the merchants in the town center were re-packaging bottled water with tap water.

In Vashisht I chose a strange dish at the Big, Big Fish Restaurant, the fried cheese with chili sauce snack. That was going to be my dinner. It was very fried and had a lot of very hot chili sauce. I spent all night throwing it up, even after my stomach was empty. I was mobile the next day, but I had no appetite for two days. I call the loss of appetite the Delhi Diet, which is what you go on after you have Delhi Belly.

Every time I get sick, I go back and think about what caused it. Was it a particular bottle of water? A certain meal? Sometimes I am convinced I know what it was; other times I know it is just conjecture. In any case, I get superstitious. I check the date and seal on every bottle of water; I arbitrarily don't drink certain brands; I return to the same restaurants. This all assumes it is the food or water that made me sick.

I have heard that people don't get as sick in India as they did as recently as five years ago. The theory is that this is because of the availability of good water. One can either find bottled water or people have automatic boiling and filtering systems for the tap water in their homes.

I think four short episodes in six months is not too bad. I occasionally meet other travellers who have diarrhea for a week or two at a time. I have not gotten crazy from worrying about getting sick and I don't think about it much anymore.