Gets Violently Ill, Then and Now



Luxury Toilet Compared to Varanasi Train, Kodaikanal April 1995

May 3, 1995...to Varanasi, India. 
In some bizarre sort of throwback, I got violently ill Friday night (as in Friday May 1, 2015) after a routine meal of Friday family pizza (that I make myself)  and half a bottle of red wine (mommy only): but jumping back 20 years, on Monday, May 1, 1995, I suffered my first and only bout of illness on my entire venture in North Africa/ Mideast/Asia.  I hate to be dramatic, but it was indeed a near death experience lasting several days in which I was barely conscious (yeah, ladies, kind of like giving birth), and at the same time, on a 30 hour train trip with no-one really around to check my pulse as it were.

Boasting a healthy constitution,  a stomach of steel, and an openness to new culinary adventures, I had actually managed the trip to this point without shedding a single pound.  This is an extremely unusual occurrence for the average backpacker in Asia.  You'd see these haggard super-skinny guys and gals with their large packs at the hostels and me like barely squeezing into my jeans and I'd be like what is wrong with me???  For me you would think that even with the ability to drink the tap water and not contract some sort of dreadful parasite, I would at least become more lean for the following reasons a: I was walking all day, every day for twelve weeks,  carrying a heavy pack most of that time  b: there were no brownies, chocolate or wine to consume and c: small portions. Yawn! Anyway, the Great Gastric Upheaval changed all that, and I am not sure that I have been quite the same since.

Looking Healthy, Tea Plantation, April 1995

While I have no clue what set me off this past Friday, on May 1, 1995, it was undoubtedly the falafel sandwich I had at a small restaurant near the train station in Agra before hunkering down to wait for my 3am train back to Varanasi.  It's funny how after severe food poisoning, you remember that food for years and years later can't stomach the thought of eating what made you ill, though I seriously doubt I will feel repulsed by pizza and red wine for very long. Naturally, I remember the falafel because it wasn't Indian food, which is delicious, but c'mon, lentils and rice for bfast? and I was so happy to find something familiar yet totally different to eat.  Remember this is before the internet and globalization and atms....But there were a ton of Israeli travelers to Asia during that period, so Israeli falafel, hummos and tabouli were everywhere, though personally, as a part-Lebanese Arab who grew up in Saudi Arabia eating all that Arabic food, I claim all that food for the Arabs.  I think they just change the signage depending on which country is most heavily represented: Australian falafel vegemite sandwich...just kidding, LOTS of Australians but no vegemite.

Moving right along out of the Arab- Israeli conflict, which filters down to falafel stands in the middle of freaking India, as I waited the hours and hours for that 3am train in the crowded bustling and dusty station, I could feel the onset of something not quite right happening, but it was not clear at that point what exactly. What did happen initially is that the train to Varanasi was cancelled and I had to get to another train station to try to get another train in that general direction.  Along with the hundreds of other Indian would-be passengers to Varanasi. It was basically chaos and because in India the trains are generally reserved days or weeks in advance, particularly if you want the safety and protection of the "ladies only" car, which TRUST ME, you do, even if you are not exactly a lady and more like a bitch from Brooklyn but bottom line: I basically didn't have a prayer of getting on this other mysterious train from oh yeah, this other station, to this other place near Varanasi in a physical state that was rapidly deteriorating.  Right.  This is where I got to the point where I was like, whatever, I normally AM cool about no trains to nowhere (Journey Is the Destination) BUT I actually DO need to GET TO Varanasi so that I could LEAVE Varanasi so that I could take another ridiculous series of buses and trains to Kathmandu (nod to the victims of this past week's earthquake in 2015) so I could squeeze in my trek in Nepal so I could meet my best friend in Thailand on May 23 (which was also my boyfriend back home's 29th bday) as planned like in December of 1994, putting me momentarily back in the real world of normal people who went to law school and medical school and had day JOBS  with SCHEDULES and pathetically small windows of down time that I HAD to be on that train, any train as long as "they" said it was going near Varanasi, which in India that could mean hundreds of miles but whatever. I did somehow get a place on that other train and proceeded to slowly start dying:

According to my travelogue, some woman helped me secure a berth in the ladies only car, but I have no recollection of that: First it was the vomiting,  and then it was the other end, and it was fast and furious for quite a while. Actually in that state I made the wonderful discovery that squat toilets, even if on a moving train with no soap, water or toilet paper are perfect, I mean perfect, for food poisoning.  I mean think about it, you are puking and shitting at the same time, and you just squat there and do it whereas if you are like in your nice sterile bathroom with a sitting flush toilet in Brooklyn, you actually have to hold a bucket or something and gross! The whole time this past Friday night, I was just wishing I were back on that swaying train holding on to the filthy wall for balance and just doing what needed to be done....But I have to admit it was really nice to just hop into a hot shower afterwards and just you know, freshen up. Brush my teeth with good ole Tom from Maine, crawl into a bed and not onto a board...so I digress... back onto this board, essentially, in the ladies car, where I was shacked up with 5 other ladies, none of whom seemed to notice that I was curled up there in the top bunk in the fetal position moaning, because I am the first to admit, I am a drama queen. 

I was SOOO sick and the ride was SOOO long: a day and a night and a day and I could not keep anything, not even a swallow of water down. I just remember being so afraid that I was just going to die and that no-one would know or care...I have no idea how I got off that train (actually I am pretty sure I had to change trains at some point on this ride) with my pack, but somehow I did, in miraculously, Varanasi, which is where I wanted to be.  I splurged on a rickshaw to the hostel I had been staying in, got into a bed and lay there for a few days.  One of the other travelers, KN, who will feature prominently for the next 2 weeks, gave me a Limka, which is like a lemon soda, and I seriously credit Limka with saving my life and bringing me back from the brink.