Rites of passage
Most people who've been to India for any length of time will know that getting sickness and diarrhoea is par for the course, i.e. it will happen to most travellers, if not all of them. When I was working in Bangalore, living in a shared house with various other westerners, it happened to me - about halfway through my eight week stint I picked up a bug that made me feel awful for about two days (sweats, shivers, feeling really weak and faint) and culminated in a horrific torrent of puke and bile, for the entire night (and the toilet was only flush-able between 8pm, and 8am). After that came the diarrhoea, and then both together, etc, etc - the usual sat-on-bog with-bowl-on-lap type saga, not one I'd want to experience again

The point is, after about three days you do start to get better (and at some point you'll begin to put back all the weight you've lost - mine was around two stone). Then you can watch, safe in the knowledge your own immune system should now be fully adjusted to its new environment, as various bright eyed, fresh and pretty young explorers from Australia, Europe, and the United States arrive, with all sorts of dreams and ideas and a real zest for adventure... which lasts until the bug catches up with them and they too spend their ritual 48 hours puking and hurling their guts into India's still medieval sanitary and sewage systems. If you haven't faced that, you don't really know India (or Vietnam or the Philippines or Indonesia, for that matter)
(Katabatic wasn't, and will never be on, Sat 9 Jan 2010, 1:48, 1 reply)

yup
have vague memories of writhing round on the bed in the throes of post-thali gutwrenchitis for a few days. Both of us.
Puking up my ringpice and antimalarials.

The 2 day train ride across to Goa from Delhi, with the tail end of this poisoning, and a particularly heavy uterineshedding to boot was particularly memorable.
We recall it everytime we have peanutbutter and jam on toast
(maggotriddendirtbox fast, feral and sharp as a tack since, Sun 10 Jan 2010, 10:07, closed)