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Within 48 hours of me entering India, I got food poisening. Within 12 hours of me announcing this on Facebook, 16 comments and 5 ‘likes’ came in confirming my belief that diarrhea is a hot topic. That — or people actually like the fact that I got sick. I’ll assume the first. However, this post won’t be about diarrhea, and the headline was really only used to get your attention, along with this picture of a temple which slightly resembles Superman’s home.

This post really begins a travel log in India.

Upon entering India I had a couple days to kill in India. One of these days was spent in bed dealing with the above condition — the other day I had time to do some touristy things before setting off by train to travel around the north of India looking at the fair trade process with Melinda Hazelton and friend Dana Szabo. More on the purpose of this trip later …

Since I would be traveling in more rural areas of India for the next month (with a couple tourist destinations along the way) I took this one day in Delhi to be a tourist.

Although I didn’t see too much of it, Delhi was much less hectic than I had anticipated. Delhi’s population is around 12.5 million and getting around to tourist destinations (and a couple business related stops) was straight forward. I visited some temples, gardens and historic landmarks.

While I normally don’t do this type of thing often, being a tourist in India was a bit different. I found myself almost ignoring the actual attractions and just looking at the people who were visiting them — or those locals who seem to integrate their daily lives into these areas.

And there seem to be many locals who seem to embed themselves into what would normally be the tourist landscape. Perhaps space is such an issue here, there is no choice but to live where you can find space.

Alright fine. Let’s just assume there are some interesting looking structures, temples and people in Delhi. And while we look at a couple pretty pictures — perhaps a little commentary on diarrhea is appropriate … after all, this is India.

I’ve had food poisening in many places in the world, including the United States. It can happen anywhere. I do have to say, my general first impressions of India lead me to believe conditions here are far more dirty than in other places in West, Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa or the South Pacific where I’ve been.

What amazes me about this is the ability of the human body to adapt. The people here have developed great immunities to some very strong bacteria. People eat with their hands and the nature of India food is of a … messy nature. However, it would be unfair to say this isn’t an enormous issue here. 5.6 million children die each year from malnutrition here — and half of India children are underweight (nearly as bad as sub-saharan Africa). Even worse, is issues regarding water:

Water and sanitation
Water supply and sanitation in India is a matter of concern. As of 2003, it was estimated that only 30% of India’s wastewater was being treated, with the remainder flowing into rivers or groundwater. The lack of toilet facilities in many areas also presents a major health risk; open defecation is widespread even in urban areas of India, and it was estimated in 2002 by the World Health Organisation that around 700,000 Indians die each year from diarrhoea. No city in India has full-day water supply. Most cities supply water only a few hours a day. In towns and rural areas the situation is even worse.

While amongst the traveling community India surely has a infamous reputation for having issues with food quality and sanitation in relationship to the Western immune system, for the Indian population they have no choice but to live with it, causing a tremendous amount of adult and child fatalities every year.