We all have food poisoning stories from the road, I’m sure. I have a new one every week here in China. But was there ever a time when you willingly, knowingly, ate something that was bound to make you sick? So sick that you end up delirious in Panjim, India, trying to hitchhike to the hospital at three in the morning? So sick that your hotel owner and random new travel buddy have to arrange transport to said hospital, which has flickering lights and bloody cotton balls lying around?
It was because of the grapes.
A month earlier, just after I arrived in Delhi, I saw a man pushing a large handcart full of wet, dirty grapes. They glistened in the morning sunlight, and looked absolutely like something that would make you sick. I clearly recall turning to my friend Jen and saying, “Do not let me eat grapes while in India.”
Flash forward a month later. I’m by myself in Gokarna, a beach town south of Goa. There’s a nice hike to some isolated beaches, and I set out alone. On the way, I meet a nice middle-aged Indian man. We leap-frog each other several times over the course of the hike, and make casual conversation. After spending a couple of hours on the beach, I run into him again on the hike back. He is sitting beneath a tree, eating grapes. I am hot and tired and hungry, and he has been very friendly in a non-menacing way throughout my afternoon. He offers me grapes, and out of politeness I don’t feel I can refuse. The scene changes to slow motion as he hands a small bunch to me, and I pop them in my mouth, one bacteria-ridden bite at a time.Fast-forward again, this time about 10 hours. I am writhing around in my bed, sweating. I recall getting up at one point and walking around town, shouting up to a bunch of guys playing cards in an upstairs apartment. I tell them I need a ride to the hospital. They appear concerned but aren’t keen to prop me up on the back of one of their motorbikes. I wander back to my hotel and wake up a Canadian girl I’ve only just met. She wakes up the hotel owner, who helps her coordinate a ride to the hospital. Once there, they test me for malaria but ultimately announce that I have a simple case of food poisoning. I am sent home with a packet of antibiotics and some re-hydrating drink mix.
The ride home involved some hitchhiking on the part of my wonderful companion, who refused to ride a motorbike. I woke up the next morning feeling much better.
But still. It was dangerous and stupid to eat the grapes. Just as a month earlier it was stupid to drink chai from a hovel where a woman wiped the glasses clean with her soaking, dirty sari.