I love trying new foods while I’m traveling, and as a general rule that means that when I’m traveling in Asia especially I end up making myself sick to one degree or another. In every case except for one, the times I’ve eaten food that has made me sick I’ve still been function — the one exception to that I got the worst food poisoning of my life from a cheeseburger… but that’s a story for another day.

When I embarked on a recent trip to India, I wanted to get sick at some point. Actually, I decided that I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t make myself sick in India because it would mean that I didn’t eat enough weird and potentially questionable foods (i.e. street food).

Well, lo and behold, on the day of my return flight to the USA I still had managed to not make myself sick… until after dinnertime. Dinner was at about 7pm and afterwards we promptly returned to the hotel to start packing for our 4am flight out of Mumbai. And sometime around 9pm I all of a sudden had the worst stomach cramps and was making frequent trips to the toilet. The culprit? Well, I’m pretty sure that it was fried lentil patties. Mission accomplished: I made myself sick on food in India. It was surely not ideal that it happened right before heading to the airport.

Two immodium later and I was confident in my ability to survive the hour-long taxi ride to the airport, and even upon our arrival to the airport the bathroom was not my first stop. At this point I was starting to feel pretty nauseous, and sitting down was high on the priority list after getting out of the god-awfully long line at the Etihad counter. Since everyone was checking at least four million bags… alright, alright, that might be an exaggeration. Since most people were checking two to four bags, the line moved very slowly and it took nearly an hour after arriving at the airport to check in for our flight.

I had elected to give up my window seat for an aisle so that I wouldn’t need to disrupt whoever would have been unfortunate enough to end up in my row, and for the second flight back to the states we were lucky enough to end up with exit row seats — great for an easy escape!

Needless to say, those flights were not my most enjoyable. I felt pretty awful for the majority of the flights, ended up catching a cold upon my return, and it took a full ten days for my digestive system to return to normal. Yeah, you read that right! I guess that’s what I get for wanting to get sick in India!