Last Updated on January 17, 2024 by PowersToTravel
Usually when planning a trip I ask, “Is tap water safe to drink in Nepal”, or in the country to which I intend to travel. If not, then I plan on my regimen of safe eating and drinking. I am very sensitive to microbes in water and have successfully traveled in Egypt, even, by being very, very careful. (See my blog post “Travelers Diarrhea and Diabetes – How do I stop it and quickly” for more details about my sensitivity and solutions.)
The Problem
However on my second day in Nepal diarrhea hit! I’d only had several meals and had been very careful! What happened? I reviewed my actions, and wondered about the milk. Hmmm, maybe the milk supply is tainted? I asked our guide and he’d heard of no such thing.
I stopped drinking the milk in an abundance of caution. As a diabetic I just can’t be having diarrhea willy-nilly.
We flew the next day to Chitwan National Park. On the second day there, voila! I once again had diarrhea, after avoiding the milk. What more can I avoid in Nepal? I’m already not eating fresh vegetables, only eating fully cooked fresh meals, only drinking bottled water, brushing with bottled water…
To top it off, I’d already consumed two of my Azithromycin z-paks, (which had worked) and I had a month of “risky” travel left in this trip.
The Root Cause
I googled once again, “Is the water safe to drink in Nepal?” and didn’t stop at the first several articles which talk about how bad the local untreated water is, but continued reading on. I suddenly bumped into an article “Every fourth drinking water sample in Kathmandu has faecal coliform – Most of the tested samples were from bottled water” in the Kathmandu Post.
What the $%&$# is this about? I can’t drink the bottled water? What can I do?
Obviously boiling water is the solution, but what an ordeal it would be. I drink a lot of water and will need to store and carry a lot of water and won’t be able to buy it en-route. As a kidney-disease patient, I can’t skip my hydration.
So I boiled my first batch (in the tea kettle provided at the lodge), and headed out for a walk to buy souvenirs. When all else fails, go shopping!
The Solution
We looked at the water bottles in the little souvenir and convenience stores. So many brand names. Are any from another country? The water I had been drinking since arriving at Chitwan was labeled as a local Sauraha bottler. But there were others… Greg suddenly exclaimed, “Coca-Cola!” Yes, he had found that the Coca-Cola Company bottles water in Nepal. While the news article didn’t mention which bottlers had contamination, we both thought that the Coca-Cola Company may have higher standards. There wasn’t any water for sale from any bottlers from outside Nepal.
The water was called “Kinley” and we bought a few bottles, and I started to drink it. I did not get sick. We stocked up on more during our visit in Chitwan, and refused to drink the water supplied by the lodge, telling them and our tour company about my issues and the articles I had read. They claimed to have never heard of this problem.
Am I so sensitive that I’m the first tourist to be so afflicted? I don’t think so. Perhaps I’m the first they’ve known to KNOW that I was careful and the problem was elsewhere, in the presumably safe water I was drinking.
Check out this article too: “Physical, chemical and microbiological characterization of processed drinking water in central Nepal: current state study” in the Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development”, from 2020. It’s not light reading.
We ended up drinking Kinley water for the entire rest of our trip in Nepal, and demanding that our guides obtain it for us, not an easy task since there are few supermarkets in Nepal and every local convenience store seems to carry a different variety. I suppose we could also have drunk the “Aquafina” water as well, by Pepsi, but that seemed to be even harder to find than the Kinley water.
I did not get sick again in Nepal once I switched to Kinley water.
My hope is that all diabetics who travel to Nepal will read this article and consider taking this advice. If only I had known, I would have saved myself two bad mornings and a lot of worry.
