Stay Healthy in India

Namaste. We're talking about how to stay healthy in India. After a 20-some hour flight on a plane with a bunch of people and shuttled through airports and who knows what, all of a sudden, bam, you arrive in India. And it's a vastly different culture and place than you're used to. There are lots of different conditions, different foods that you'll eat that you may have never tried before.

So how do you stay healthy? The first step to staying healthy is to relax and to allow for it to be new. You can't get the things that you get at home in India. It's a different place, and you're on this pilgrimage to experience what's new. So try things, but use your judgment and enjoy and trust that you're taking care of.

Here's some basics of essential things that you should bring with you on this pilgrimage to keep yourself healthy. The first step is to remember that you will be drinking bottled water. Don't bring your Nalgene or your Eco bottle with you. There will be no filtered water available in most of the places you are, and if it is, you probably shouldn't drink it. It's best to be safe and to drink bottled water.

If it's a sealed bottle, great, it's OK. The next thing is to bring some medicines with you. They might not be ones that you use all the time at home, but you will be really happy to have them with you in India. You should have a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and don't buy the tablets because they don't work in an emergency. You need that thick Pepto-Bismol to help you feel better.

If you can, bring a bottle of Imodium, and also bring a set of some sort of Sudafedrine or Decongestant in case you get sick from the pollution because this is also quite common. A big question about coming to India that I'm asked all the time is, do I need to get vaccinated? Most people have a question around vaccines, but this is really your choice if you feel that it's right for you. Vaccines are available through your local public health office. If you live in the US, you just have to look on the internet in your county, and there is a list of the recommended travel vaccinations.

You could also choose to do the homeopathic vaccinations if you feel that that's a better option for you, but again, this is your choice, and none of the vaccines are required by law or by your visa or entering back into the United States. What's good to remember when you consider getting vaccinated or not is, again, you can't imagine the conditions that you will be in. They will be different from where you are at home. Regardless if you're staying in an ashram or a hotel, you don't have any control over what you're exposed to, so make a choice that helps you feel safe. Here are some strategies to keep you healthy in India that have worked for me and some of my friends, and you might find them helpful.

The first thing that is so important about you taking this trip is that you do it when you're healthy. You don't want to go to India after you've had a surgery or when your immune system is compromised because you're exposing yourself to a completely new environment. Taking vitamins to help keep your immune system strong like vitamin C or bringing airborne or emergency packets with you is really, really a great idea. It will keep you feeling energetic and strong. Taking grapefruit seed extract in your daily water may be like one or two drops, but not too much because you don't want it to have the adverse effect is a good way to kill off negative bacteria.

You could also bring stable probiotics, the kind that don't need to be refrigerated, and take those daily as well as digestive enzymes. The papaya enzymes are a good one because they taste good and you can chew them after your meals is really great. The oldest trick in the book to staying healthy in India in your belly is to eat yogurt. You'll be all over India seeing beautiful buffaloes and cows and handmade yogurt being made on the side of the road, and this is the most, the most best way to keep yourself safe by exposing your body to those positive probiotic enzymes. So eat lots of yogurt, drink lots of blesses.

Fabulous. When you visit someone's home in India, it's customary to be offered food and drink because you're an honored guest. This can sometimes be disconcerting because when you're given water and you don't know if it's filtered or you're given food and you're unsure of if you should eat it, you might have some alarm signals going off as to what do I do and how do I tell these people that are so kind that maybe I can't eat their food. This is a personal choice. At some point in your journey, I guarantee it, you'll be offered something and you'll just decide to eat it, and you'll take it as a blessing.

But when it comes to water, just remember, it's really, really important that you always drink your water. So a way to respectfully decline something is to say, oh, namaste, thank you. And to say, I'm not taking food right now. What do you avoid when you're in a new place like India and everything is so new? To stay healthy, it's important to experiment wisely.

If you're going to eat street food, make sure that the oil is super hot and that that delicious samosa that comes out of that oil is steaming. If you're out walking the streets, make sure that you observe the fact if you're eating food off of like a main thoroughfare, off of a main road, the food is exposed to dust and many things that food at home isn't. So best to take food when it's fresh, fresh, fresh, and from a place where it's not attracting lots of elements. What happens if you get sick while you're in India? It's important to remember to ask for help.

When you visit your doctor before your trip, he'll most likely give you a bottle of antibiotics to bring with you in case you do get sick. So bring those with you and have them on hand. Taking care of your health while you're on the pilgrimage is your responsibility and doing it in a way that feels good to you. It'll be like a daily practice that you bring into everything you do to keep yourself healthy along the way. Since surrender is such an important aspect of traveling and making a pilgrimage, you don't know.

You might get sick and if you do, just remember to ask for help. Everyone in India that you meet will probably be very kind and considerate and offer their help if you need it, if you are sick. So just remember that you're supported wherever you are.