When travelin' goes bad

Well... it was bound to happen sooner or later. I've been bragging about how I never get sick. In the past two years, I've been to Peru, Bolivia, China, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Doha, and Israel and had zero stomach problems. Street food... no problems. Dirty dishes... no problems. Tap water in Jordan... no problems. Three weeks in India... no problems. Then... disaster hit. On the morning Steph was supposed to depart for China and I was supposed to head to the meditation stay, we both woke up with a massive case of travel sickness. Not your run of the mill runs... I'm talking fever, chills, stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomit... the works. The kind of sick when you are stuck in the bathroom and your only worry is which end the sickness is gonna come out of next... up top or down bottom... and you spend the entire day alternating between sitting on the porcelaine throne and praying on your knees to the porcelaine god. The best part was that both of us were sick and had to take turns in the bathroom. When I wasn't in the bathroom I was in the hotel room, curled into the fetal positioning, sweating, shivering, and wimpering (yes, literally wimpering) from the stomach cramps. Can't remember the last time I've had stomach cramps that bad. When I was in the bathroom, I could hear Steph waiting at the door desparately trying to hold it all in.

Damn you India...YOU WIN... I was cocky and thought my stomach was invincible, but you proved me wrong. You defeated me and left me crying like a little girl. Next time I go to India, I'm only going to eat street food... I figure if I'm gonna get sick, I might as well go out in a blaze of glory. Maybe next time I'll end up getting Giardia or some other glorious travel ailment.

So my trip has changed once again. I didn't get to do the 2 weeks in silence that I planned, because I wasn't able to leave my bathroom to get on the train. Perhaps it was a good thing. I was already having second thoughts about staying at the ashram during the summer. When the coordinator emails you to specifically remind you that the temperature is 110 during the day and 90 at night, it kinda makes one have doubts about "finding yourself" while you are battling dehydration and various other heat related ailments. So, of the three top things that I wanted to do on this trip - dive the Red Sea, meditate at an ashram, and see Tibet - only one came through.... but not for a lack of effort or good intentions. I guess I'll just have to save the spiritual stuff for another trip when Olympic protests blocking the way to Tibet and my stomach isn't exploding.

Obviously, there are no pictures for this part of the trip, but if are curious I can give you a very detailed description of what everything looked like and you can create your own in mental images.