shaving legs

have to say that the only places I have drunk water out of the tap is where the kitchens have RO filters...the last place I stayed in Chennai I filled a water bottle daily from their filter contraption and had no problems whatsoever...

I shave my legs, I brush my teeth and I even drink boiled or self-filtered tap water in India. Call it insane, but I didn't get more stomach bugs in one year in India than in one average year in Germany. I know there are other risks of water borne diseases, too, but if I start thinking too much about them I'd rather stay at home. If I had only 2 weeks holiday in India, maybe I'd care more, but for a longer time period I feel it's too complicated for me.

Looks like we're a tough tribe, federica!

After drinking 'regular' water in all kinds of restaurants and dhabas for years, believing it was filtered water, I was informed by someone in the know that I had most probably been drinking tap water most of the time....

Only on trains do I use bottled water to brush my teeth.

I suppose I have a strong stomach.

Friends did drink local water for 20 years then one got hep A from the water at a restaurant.

Me too

And I don't trust the filtered water in the big containers at railway stations for drinking.

yes and yes.

and one can get hepatitis any day at restaurants (even 5 star ones) without ever leaving home, so I will not freak out about brushing my teeth with a hotel's tap water.

Not trying to panic anyone into anything, I brush my teeth with local water too. But sometimes, things can go wrong....

Help! Help! My toothbrush is stuck in my mouth!




(Try saying that with a toothbrush stuck in your mouth...)

ep ep m tudbush tukn muthh

hmmmmm.... good one about drinking from restaurant "clean" water. For many years I would NEVER drink the water supplied on the table(in the steel jug), but after some education from some good restaurant guys, I came to believe that the water in those shiny stainless jugs always came from the local "good" drinking water supply. I never looked back. 100+ Restaurants = no Hep A, B or C yet.

Naive?

It's all in the mind Indyboy, I remember eating Aloo tikkis 5 times, before spotting the guy rehydrating his chola sauce with water from the river where people had been washing their clothes, he literally had to brush the scum away. And the burning ghat was only 200 meters further up river LOL

I wasn't sick! Maybe it was good water though ;-)

I do shave my legs in the shower, but I am very carefull with cuts. Any cuts can infect easily, because of unknown bugs and the hot humid weather in India. I would attend to all even minor cuts with iodine and a cover.

Thanks. I have memorised that. Now, if I ever hear those words over the telephone I will know that it is not a Tamil speaker getting a wrong number, but a friend in dire distress.

Most of the restaurants serve water from drums of purified water; the same stuff as you pay extra to get in your very own bottle. No guarantees that the machine that dispensed it is sterile, and my wife usually refuses it, but ...it works for me.

I DO agree about being careful about cuts, however you get them, but not with the paranoia about the water (either drinking with it or shaving with it.)

I usually scratch my mosquito bites until the skin bleeds so am careful about cleaning the skin thoroughly -- with the tap water! -- and putting antiseptic gel and a bandage on.

oh...mosquito bites....that's for another thread....