I tried to think what could have caused it. It was a combination of things, I think. The cream cheese and garlic with bread was not prepared in a way that would satisfy any environmental health inspector. Then again I had not had anything to eat like that for a while and perhaps my stomach was not ready for it. I had eaten an enormous meal the night before. Perhaps I had just over eaten. Then again, I had eaten the food Indian style using my fingers rather than a spoon. Perhaps I had poisoned myself.
Whatever it was I wasn't up to eating anything. I had some Mr Pik drinking water and mixed it with some of the re hydration powders I had picked up in Selcuk near Ephesus. I sipped it until I felt strong enough to wash and go out to look for a pharmacy to buy some more powders, a lot of them.
I have located a picture of the Guest House pictured from the Street. I think it is the same one.
It doesn't look very imposing does it? It wasn't. Just outside the door you can see concrete. That probably covers the sewer that runs down the street. I remember coming out of the door and looking across the street where I saw a young mother standing on the sort of platform bridge outside her front door dangling one of her children over the open sewer that ran past the entrance to the house while the toddler produced a couple of turds directly into it. India was generally quite unsanitary and that is very much an understatement.
I don't remember exactly whether it was in Pushkar that I began to understand why Muslims and other religious groups consider pork to be unclean. If you follow the open sewers out to the edge of a village or town you begin to notice small hairy pigs trotting around briskly, foraging for whatever they could. You guessed it. So far as I could tell they were living waste disposal specialists. I don't know whether anyone was responsible for looking after the pigs.
I found a pharmacy and invested in a plentiful supply of re hydration powders got a similar supply of drinking water and and retired back to the room where I spent the day lying down, listening to the World Service on the radio, gradually sipping the solution. I probably also took a tablet to basically paralyse my gut. I forget the name of the tablet tight now. It works. I wrote postcards and letters and got my gear together. I decided that what I had seen in Pushkar was enough. I was leaving the next day.
