In the late 1980s we took a film crew and a couple of actors to north India for a ten day shoot. If one of the crew or the cast had become incapacitated by illness the whole, expensive, endeavour might have been curtailed or abandoned. This was when the first Ten Commandments for staying healthy while travelling in India was written. Since then it has been expanded and updated many times.
PREAMBLE
At home in England most people occasionally get an attack of diarrhoea. This mild looseness of the bowel is usually no more than an inconvenience and usually cures itself. Diarrhoea in India is a different matter altogether.
Delhi Belly which can, of course, be caught anywhere not just in Delhi, is often accompanied by excruciating stomach cramps, it can ruin your holiday or business trip, it can hospitalise you, it can result in you the being repatriated at the expense of your travel insurance provider. If not treated it can, even today, kill you. There is, however, a fate worse than death.
Delhi Belly can cause a torrent of scalding liquid faeces, bile, mucus and blood to explode from your bum while you are in company and/or in a public place. This will probably be the most embarrassing moment of your life. You will not notice the embarrassment at the time of the explosion as you will be fully occupied being ill. You will, however want to hide under the duvet every time you remember this moment, for the rest of your life. It is not impossible but it is very difficult to go on being friends (or lovers) with the other people who were in the taxi with you at the moment your bum exploded. Take my word for it!
Why should anyone listen to my recommendations? I first went to India in 1955. I have been back around twenty times since I left in the mid 1960s. I have lived in the sub-continent, on and off, for nearly fifteen years. I am still alive and still travelling. I must be doing something right.
Some people will look at these Ten Commandments and tell you that you do not need to be so strict with yourself. They will say that many things including hygiene and healthcare in India have improved enormously in recent years. This is true and if you break some or all these rules you might be OK. But when not being OK is so spectacularly awful why take the risk? I promise you that following these rules will not spoil your visit to the most wonderful country in the world.
The Ten Commandments
1. Never eat the prawns. Even in the smartest restaurant or top-end Hotel or even on the flight home on British Airways don’t eat the prawns, Prawns are cunning little creatures especially designed to sieve the shit out of water. Many of the prawns that will appear on your plate in India have been farmed in the delta of one of India’s (or Bangladesh’s) mighty rivers. Here they live a life of luxury, with a constant supply of rich and tasty soup made of human excrement, decomposing human bodies, rotting animal carcasses and toxic chemicals. If you eat prawns in your home country (I do) that’s OK but for now just wait until you get back home.
2. Drink only bottled water. Only accept water in bottles with an unbroken seal. If it arrives at your table with the seal broken send it back. In some smart places they offer you filtered water. Just pay for the bottled stuff. Clean your teeth with bottled water. When you are in the shower do not tip your head back and gargle with the shower water.
3. Only ever eat vegetarian food. India is largely a vegetarian country so you won’t go hungry. Many Indian restaurants advertise themselves as "PURE VEGETARIAN" which means that they only serve vegetarian food and do not even prepare any meat, poultry, or seafood in their kitchen. There is some good news. It is a simple and undeniable fact that Indian vegetarian cooking (especially South Indian vegetarian cooking) is the greatest cuisine in the world. There are thousands of dishes. Just sit down and enjoy it.
4. Never put your fingers in your mouth. Don’t pick your teeth. Don’t play with your lips in an absent-minded way. Keep your nails short. Use a scrubbing brush. Don’t lick your finger to turn over the pages of your book. Don’t put you fingers in your mouth to whistle suggestively at that cute Australian backpacker you meet on the beach. Just never put your fingers in your mouth.
5. Never, ever, eat the prawns. Chicken will make you ill but prawns will fuck you up…utterly. Vegetables, of course, will make you fart but you, your companions and loved ones can live with this.
6. Carry with you, wherever you go, a small bottle of hand sanitiser. You can use the expensive gel that was produced for Covid but I prefer Turkish lemon cologne (Limon Kolonya). It is used all over Europe in Greek and Turkish barbershops and in restaurants. It is used as a refreshing, antiseptic aftershave and hand sanitiser. It is 80% alcohol, which is the same strength as the Covid hand gels and is strong enough to kill the germs on your hands while providing instant cooling, hygiene, and a long-lasting, citrus scent. You can buy it online in a spray pump bottle.
7. Carry with you, wherever you go, a very large handkerchief and a small bottle of liquid soap. Almost every restaurant you go into, even way off the beaten track, will offer adequate or superior hand washing facilities. Wash hands well with plenty of soap and then dry your hands on the large handkerchief you carry with you. Not on the towel provided. If you watch you will see that all the locals are giving their hands a good scrub whenever they can. When you are hot and bothered you can soak the large handkerchief in bottled water, wring it out and the put it round your neck cowboy style. As the water evaporates it will cool you down. If you take two handkerchiefs you can wash and dry one each day.
8. Don’t lick that cute Australian backpacker (CAB) It’s easy to think that always using condoms as thick as car-tyre innertubes keeps you safe. This is good thinking but while Condoms can save you from STDs you may still die from licking your loved one’s hands or fingers.
9. When the CAB eats a barbeque chicken skewer from a food vendor on the beach do not think “well if he/she/they can eat it I can too”. Follow the Commandments and when the CAB is being flown back to Oz a week early you will still be on the beach wondering if that Canadian with the big ears, buck teeth and freckles on their nose is travelling alone or what. This rule is very difficult to obey. The chicken smells so good and the CAB looks so healthy and cheerful. You need to be prepared for the temptation and just say “NO”.
10. Be very careful what you smoke. The weed in south India is wonderful but…. My mother was employed by the British High Commission in first Chennai then Mumbai, to visit British boys (they were all boys back then) doing ten to life in Indian prisons. She would visit them once a month, take them Readers Digest condensed books, food, treats, small amounts of Rupees, ointment for their fly-infested sores, chat to them for an hour, encourage them to keep up their sprits, hug them and dab away their tears when it was time to leave, take away their letters to post to their mum in Guilford or Wigan and then go home and weep all evening as she wrote up the reports of her visit. I would like to suggest that you lay off the herbal cigarettes for the duration of your visit. Anything to do with sharing needles is, of course, off-the-scale stupid.
It would be nice to report that at the end of her life some of these boys sought out my mother and wrote to her. They didn’t. Not, I think, because they were ungrateful but because, I assume, none of them survived.
11. Check the detailed India page on the NHS website. You should ideally arrange an appointment with your health professional four to six weeks before travel. However, even if time is short, an appointment is still worthwhile. Confirm what you need/do not need to do and review your existing vaccinations. Do what they say. Do not chicken-out on the jabs. Get the advice and do what they say.
12. Never, ever, ever, eat the fucking prawns.
Joe Tibbetts
last edited 1 February 2026