SPEND five days and nights in a hot room in a dusty town with a toddler struck
by Delhi belly and you will never want to see India again. In a child not
out of nappies, it is shit on a quite epic and distressing scale. And that’s
just for the mother.
Goa looks lovely, but I overlooked one obvious thing before deciding to go
there: it’s in India. India might look pretty, but nowhere does poo on the
streets, poo in the food, poo on the beach like an Indian village. Quite why
I thought Ellie, at two years and four months, would avoid the inevitable I
am not sure — perhaps because we weren’t travelling around much, we were
only going to the coast, er . . . there were lots of us.
Which meant lots of children to get diarrhoea and, in retrospect, it was
inevitable that at least one of the ten kids in our party would fall ill. No
matter how good the doctors are — and they are good, and fast, and cheap, £2
a visit — and no matter how good the hospital, which I’m happy to say I
didn’t quite need but which came highly recommended by other parents — no
matter how wonderful the entire Indian healthcare system is, you don’t want
to spend your holiday getting to know it.
They might have had the best drips in world, but when it looked, after five
days without food and barely a drop to drink, as if my wasted daughter was
going to have to go on one, I was ready to fly home. I was all set to get
her out of the heat and put her in an English hospital if necessary instead.
Did I feel guilty? Yes. And stupid. When I had the photographs developed a
few months after coming home, I was shocked at the pale and sweaty ghost
child I saw.
So I would caution any parent of young children to think twice before taking
them to India. But that said, no other child in our party was as ill —
although most had edgy stomachs some of the time.
A group of us decided to make the trip: it started out being three families
and ended up as six or seven. Sally, Nicola and I brought six children aged
from seven months to seven, as well as Sally’s partner Paulie’s teenage
daughter. Anna from Brighton brought two kids; Rebecca had another toddler;
and then my daughter Ellie’s godmother decided to fly over from Singapore
for a long weekend. Then Paulie had vaguely mentioned to Rob, Sally had
vaguely told Caz, and Caz had a friend in the north . . . all headed for
Patnem, a beautiful stretch in southern Goa where the village spills on to
the sand, for the fortnight. For someone whose ideal of a holiday is to talk
to absolutely no one, it could have been a nightmare — two weeks of communal
banana pancakes and parties by the sea, sprinkled with repeated hippy tales.
Given that I spent most of the first week sweating it out in a bedroom with
Ellie, the communal aspect turned out to be the least of my worries. Other
than making trips to the pharmacy to collect the latest
antibiotics/anti-bacterial thingies, there wasn’t a lot my friends could do
to help: a sick toddler is a clingy toddler.
With much of central Goa blighted by the package-tour trade, you have to head
farther south or north to find peace. Patnem is all wooden huts and swinging
beds, hammocks and restaurants called Cheeky Chapatis or Dancing Shivas,
selling mostly Indian food, a couple of quid for a fish curry.
Book a charter flight, throw away the hotel voucher, take a taxi south from
the airport for an hour and a half and ask to be dropped at the beach. It is
lined with places to stay, mostly fairly basic huts, 300-3,000 rupees
(£3.50-£35) a night. If what you don’t get is luxury — there are power cuts
every day — what you do get is hundreds of metres of sand and sea lapping at
your doorstep.
Jump into a tuk-tuk and clatter your way to one of the unspoilt beaches: white
sand, the sea, a cow, and you. My daughter learnt four new words that
fortnight: tuk-tuk, papaya, Coca-Cola — and diarrhoea.
Need to know
Getting there: Cosmos
(0870 4431823) uses Monarch charter flights to Goa. Prices from £365 for
flights and one night room-only. Thomson
(0870 1900737) has similar deals from £339.
Staying there: Home
(00 91 832 264 3916). On the beach, simple rooms, superb food; from £11.
Staying healthy
Upset stomachs, leading to diarrhoea, are far more dangerous in a baby or
child than in an adult since fluids make up a larger proportion of
children’s body mass. If they have diarrhoea, make up a drink with oral
rehydration sachets (such as Dioralyte), and if the outbreak seems serious,
or if you cannot get your child to drink, consult a doctor.
Further information: Travellers’ Health — How to Stay
Healthy Abroad by Dr Richard Dawood (OUP, £16.99). The Times
Holiday Handbook by Cath Urquhart, published on September 18 (£12.95)
by Navigator Guides.
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