They Say Don’t Drink The Water

Liz and I have always said “if it’s good enough for the locals, it’s good enough for us”. Once s/y ‘Full Flight’ and ourselves filled the boat’s water tanks up from a lorry off a dusty dock in Massawa, Eritrea. Whilst the other boat owners looked on in horror, the locals just said “well we drink it”. Of course traipsing the dark back streets of Jaipur in Rajasthan is thirsty work, so these communal drinking taps are a god-send. I noticed there’s a theme for Thursday (it’s now Thursday in India) called #ThirstyThursdayPics, hosted by +Giuseppe Basile, which encourages us to share ‘all things water’. The line “seascapes, lakes and rivers are the subject”, however, kinda scuppers this one for a submission!

Google+: View post on Google+

If you like our content and would like to support us, we will give you ad-free access to our videos before they go live to the public, discounts in our shop, access to Jamie’s iconic full-res photographs, and supporter-only blog posts. Click our ugly mugs for more info!

9 thoughts on “They Say Don’t Drink The Water”

  1. I live in South Korea and when I first got here from the UK I was sick all the time. After living here the best part of a decade I'm very rarely ill. Your body takes time to get used to new bugs. Korea isn't exactly Indonesia or India, but it still pretty filthy in places compared to Europe. I also live in a crowded city where people cough without covering their mouth's, usually don't wash their hands after visiting the toilet (even when they work in restaurants!) and spit everywhere. My immune system could probably have a good go at taking on ebola, JE, malaria or any other hardcore virus-germ these days.

  2. Wow what a wonderful life experience Jamie….(the trip, not the bacterial tolerance <grin>). When you are there for that amount of time there is nothing you can do but build up and try to stay healthy….you can't avoid it completely no matter how hard you try. I'm sure it is the same for them when visiting here or any foreign land.

  3. This is true, Mark. However Liz and I have slowly been making our way from Turkey to India via Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen and Oman. The journey took us months and we would spend weeks at sea at any one time, so it was partly out of necessity. Because we'd lived in Turkey for years, however, we'd already started to build up bacterial tolerance. Now that we're in India we fill up our tanks from the local water supply without a problem, and have been doing so for 18 months now. It was when I returned to the UK for a visit that my stomach started to question what was going on!

  4. In my India experience, it probably doesn't hurt to "drink what the locals drink". I was super careful with my water (to the point of disinfecting EVERY DROP) and got ragingly sick anyway, as did my travel buddy. Lost ~15 pounds in 3 weeks travelling. Its a new place full of unfamiliar bugs, unless you have a stomach of steel, you are going to get sick.

    That photo really does capture the public fountain scene. well done.

  5. I had that same attitude when I went to Jamaica…..spent about 3 months there. After I came back I promptly lost 60 pounds due to the intestinal bug I picked up. It isn't that water isn't unhealthy, it is that it has a different type of bacteria in it than your body is used to, and you could potentially react very negatively to it.

    Just a thought. Nice photo.

Leave a Reply to Jamie Furlong Cancel Reply

Scroll to Top