On our fourth day in Delhi, Nathan and I started to fall apart. Whether it was the exposure to improperly prepared food, fruits and vegetables washed with contaminated water, or some issue we were completely unaware of, the infamous “Delhi Belly” was now attached to us at the hip. For Nathan, it was spread out over a couple of weeks, whereas I took the full brunt of it over the course of a miserable and sleepless night, followed by two full days devoted to recovery. You might not want to read this one if you’re in the middle of a meal, or grossed out by diarrhea more than usual. The following is my experience of becoming abnormally sick in India.

Before my trip, a good friend had warned me that it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when,” you encounter the squirts in India. And even still, while I took the required vaccinations before I left - Typhoid, Hep A - I didn’t really prepare at all for any encounter with illness while in India. Thankfully, my roommate Nathan had packed pills of activated charcoal that we both ended up in dire need of.

The worst part about having diarrhea in Delhi, is that outside of homes or hotels, there are not many clean or comfortable places to deal with it. If the sudden urge to go strikes while you’re touring a monument or historic site, you’re likely to be nowhere near any sort of sanitary environment to go about your messy business. And when you do find the nearest toilet, it’s usually one of the eastern variety, where you might find yourself squatting over a hole in the ground and cleaning up with a cup of water and your bare hand, as most places lack even toilet paper (you really MUST watch this video of how the Eastern latrine is operated).

It started to hit me on our fourth day while touring Humayun’s Tomb (see my previous post), but it wasn’t until later that night when it showed me its worst. I woke alert at 11 pm with the awareness that my body was about to rid itself of undesired material with or without my consent. I hurried to the toilet to promptly fill it with liquid nastiness. I felt absolutely disgusting from head to toe, and was starting to worry that I would soon be sending it out from my top end as well. I hadn’t experienced diarrhea as serious as this before, so I just assumed it would be a matter of time before it ran its course, and went back to bed. That ended up being a mistake; because before I could even fall back to sleep, I had to go again, and release more water. And so began the worst night I’ve had in recent memory, rising every fifteen minutes to hit the porcelain throne, and unable to fall back asleep in between sprays. From 11 PM to 7 AM this was my life, and I steadily began to weaken as I slowly became dangerously dehydrated. The night was this unending haze of exhaustion and discomfort, and as the sun started to rise, I was pretty certain I would be unable to make the 11 AM flight to Jodhpur with Caleb and Nathan.

The fifth morning was our last in Delhi before we left for a week-long tour of Northern India, so Nathan rose and packed his things to arrive at Caleb’s in time for breakfast. He still wasn’t in the best shape but had been able to sleep most of the night. - I can’t imagine what it would have been like if he and I had to fight for the toilet throughout the entire night. With even the thought of food making me nauseous, I decided to try and sleep for a bit before checking out of the Airbnb. On his way out, Nathan gave me a couple of activated charcoal pills for my stomach and suggested I set an alarm after which I would check in with him. I’m not sure if I ended up getting any extra sleep at all, but packing my things was frighteningly difficult. I felt so weak, that every movement seemed to take strenuous effort. I eventually got dressed and shouldered my full pack, and began a slow and weary descent from the rooftop, and an almost delirious walk through the narrow and busy streets to Caleb’s place. Every step was a struggle, as a blur of strange people and vehicles buzzed all around me in a constant hum. Thankfully Caleb’s place wasn’t far, so I made it there without collapsing. When I arrived, I immediately found a couch to rest upon, while Caleb found me Gatorade to replenish electrolytes, as well as four more charcoal pills to ingest. I was in no condition for air travel, so Nathan and Caleb wished me well as they departed for Jodhpur, and I soon passed out hard. I more or less slept uninterrupted for the next 24 hours.

The rest of that fifth day in Delhi was a complete blur. At some point, I worked up the strength to move from the couch to a spare bedroom upstairs. The charcoal seemed to be stabilizing my diarrhea, so I was able to sleep for hours on end without a need to release fluids. As I understood it, the charcoal particles in my stomach were attaching to whatever bacteria was harming me and essentially dragging it out of my stomach with my bowel movements. I still felt too gross to eat, and so I went to bed that night without having eaten anything since dinner the evening before. I ended up going a full 36 hours without eating before starting to nibble on crackers Alyssa (Caleb’s wife) had found for me, washing them down with more Gatorade.

It was an incredibly humbling experience: feeling so strong and alive one day, and then the very next feeling like I’d been crushed by a charging war elephant. At my lowest point, I was terrified, as I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so physically weak. As I entered survival mode, I started to worry that the remaining five weeks of my trip could be in jeopardy. I realized later that I wasn’t anywhere near the verge of shitting myself to death, but the fact that I had never before been that sick while also in such a foreign place was creating a sense of panic. I’m so thankful for the timing of everything - how I was able to rely on the hospitality of generous Americans to help me recover, in the safety and comfort of their own home, as opposed to some hostel dorm with random strangers coming and going as I slept for hours on end, in some city where I had no one I felt I could trust. One of the side effects I dealt with throughout the next few weeks was a loss of appetite for Indian food. While I loved the taste, I had a nagging uncertainty that it would trigger another bout of illness, and was cautious with almost every bite. However, I remained hopeful that this experience meant that my body now had some amount of resistance to contaminants I would be exposed to down the road, and I was lucky to remain healthy for the rest of the trip, except for a cold to wrestle with later on in Nepal.

Over the course of my two-day recovery at Caleb’s home, I started to plan a solo trip to Jodhpur - where Caleb and Nathan were off to at the moment - trading away two of my days in Delhi later on in which we didn’t have anything planned. I recovered just in time to rendezvous at the airport with Nathan and Caleb on their return from Jodhpur, and catch a ride with Nathan for a four day trip to Agra and Jaipur. (Head over to my Agra post to continue my India journey chronologically)

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