After 399 days on the road, it finally happened. Food poisoning caught up to us with a vengeance while traveling in Georgia.
Viewpoint at Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument
When people hear about us traveling around the world full-time, they usually ask quite a few questions (and occasionally we receive a few confused looks…).
One of the questions people we meet ask us the most is about food poisoning and if we get sick often.
It is funny because since we have moved from the United States, we have had some of the best and most insanely delicious food of our entire lives! We are a lot healthier overall, feel better, and have less stomach issues than we did in the US. But, there are people who think that we must be spending a lot of our time traveling stuck on the toilet based on what you read online.
Bali Belly, Delhi Belly, oh my!
We have eaten street food in Thailand, been on a food tour in the busiest market in Delhi, India, eaten at night markets in rural Laos, and more. Despite being adventurous with food, possibly more than we should have been at times, we didn’t get sick in over a year of traveling.
We are careful about eating foods that could be unsafe. We also may have had a bit of luck on our side, but that luck finally ran out in Kazbegi, Georgia.
Visiting Georgia (the country, not the state) has been on our bucket list for years. We were excited to finally visit, but to be honest – our trip has been a bit of a mess for various reasons. Don’t get us wrong. Our time in Georgia was still filled with beautiful sights, kind people, and delicious food.
We seem to have just had a string of mishaps with the cherry on top being food poisoning.
A Georgian Road trip to Remember
We began our epic Georgian road trip by heading to the famous Kakheti wine region. Do you know Georgia is where wine was invented?
Yup. Archaeologist’s have traced wine creation in Georgia all the way back to 6000 BC.
We spent a lovely few nights at a guesthouse in Telavi. We drank wine, made new friends, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Georgian guest houses are not like staying in a hotel. It is really more like being welcomed home at your grandparents house.
The wine is flowing, conversation lively, homemade food is shared, and the toasts by your host are never-ending.
Day trip to Sighnaghi, Georgia
We said goodbye to our new friends and it was time to hit the road again. The next stop on our Georgian road trip was Kazbegi, Georgia.
From Telavi, it is about a 3.5 hour drive up the Georgian Military Highway. This is an insane drive with many fun stops along the way. From gorgeous natural scenery, to a Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument, to 17th century fortresses – there is no shortage of sights along the way and we were loving every moment of it.
Zhinvali Water Reservoir along Georgian Military Highway
As we were driving, we looked for a place to stop for lunch. We found a restaurant that seemed decent on Google Maps and decided to stop, but once we arrived no one was there and it was completely closed. We drove a few more minutes and stopped at a second restaurant. We went inside and they told us they weren’t serving food and were closed. Cool. Again, we drove a few minutes and found another restaurant. They said they were open and could serve us.
Third times the charm, right? Wrong.
We ordered cucumber and tomato salad and a side of roasted potatoes. Cucumber and tomato salad is a tasty Georgian staple. It’s fresh tomatoes and cucumbers mixed with a bit of oil. Light, healthy, and delicious. We had eaten it almost every single day in Tbilisi and naively thought this time would be no different.
Georgian Tomato Cucumber Salad
We finished our meal and drove the rest of the way to our hotel. We checked into the cutest hotel and were greeted by the babushka. “Pay now or pay later?”, she asked us in broken English. “Pay later”, we said. She responded, “NO, you pay NOW!” We handed over our cash and headed up to our room.
Death by…Salad?
Around 6 hours after eating lunch, the waves of nausea began to hit. We weren’t exactly sure what was happening yet, but we both began to feel terrible at almost the exact same moment. Obviously we will spare you the details of all that happened next.
Let’s just say it was one of the longest nights of our lives.
While lying in bed in a foreign country in a rural village – unable to speak the language, helpless to drive to a main city, too weak to go out and get food – we both separately wondered to ourselves if achieving our travel goals of seeing the world were worth the suffering we were experiencing in that moment.
It’s not always glamorous, that’s for sure.
Of course the suffering at times is absolutely worth the experiences and we wouldn’t trade it for anything. We are so insanely blessed to have these opportunities. But feeling like you are slowly dying in a strange town does have a way of making you briefly question it.
Being sick can make you remember just how far away from home you are. Far from your normal comforts of saltine crackers and vegetable soup. Far from a hug from your mom. Far from your favorite cozy sweatshirt and blanket to snuggle in.
We did have the most insane view to enjoy from our hotel room while sick though.
View from our hotel room in Kazbegi, Georgia
After a few days of laying in bed, surviving off of the closest thing we could find to crackers and doing our best to rehydrate, we were able to drive back to Tbilisi. Although Kazbegi is gorgeous and the mountains look like something from a painting, it was nice to be back in an area with bigger grocery stores, food delivery, and a larger hospital in case we decided we needed to go.
And that is how we lost our battle with food poisoning after 399 days of traveling! Here’s to hoping that we can make it another 399 days (or longer) without having to endure that specific pain again.
Finally leaving our hotel room to venture back into the world
Tips for Preventing Food Poisoning
So, how can you prevent food poisoning from happening to you while traveling?
Food and water-borne illnesses can happen anywhere, but developing countries typically have the highest risk. This includes most countries in Asia (excluding Japan), as well as Central and South America, parts of the Middle East, and Africa.
Although it is always a risk when traveling anywhere, here are a few of our tips to avoid getting sick and questioning all of your life decisions that led you to that point like us.
1. Be careful with tap water and ice
Always check to see if the tap water is safe to drink. If the tap water is unsafe to drink, do not use ice in these countries either. In some places, the ice was likely made with tap water. This can be a hard one to follow in places like Southeast Asia where the fruit smoothies made with ice are tempting on a hot day. We did have tons of smoothies in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia made with ice, but we looked for street vendors with bagged ice.
2. Don’t brush your teeth with tap water
This is largely dependent on the country you are traveling in. Our rule of thumb is that if the tap water isn’t safe enough to drink, then we don’t brush our teeth with it either. When we were traveling in Southeast Asia, we met a lot of travelers who didn’t drink the water, but did brush their teeth with it and didn’t get sick. However, we still chose to use bottled water to brush. It’s up to you, but for us, it just isn’t worth the risk of getting sick.
3. Read Google Reviews
One of our most used travel apps is Google Maps. Google Maps is great to read reviews of restaurants and find out if it is somewhere people commonly get food poisoning. The Reviews section of the app has a Search feature where you can specifically search terms like “sick” or “food poisoning” to see if anything comes up. Of course there are still times where we venture out into the unknown of a new city and try places where we see a lot of locals lined up without checking any reviews because that is one of the fun parts of traveling. But any other time, we are checking Google Maps.
4. No raw vegetables and fruits
Again, this can vary depending on the country and region you are traveling in. Obviously we broke this rule in Georgia. Fruits and vegetables can easily carry bacteria, which can make them unsafe to eat raw. Peelable fruits like bananas are usually safe to eat.
5. Do your research
In some countries, we follow these tips with no exceptions. In other countries, we are a bit more lax at times. Make sure to always do your research on the specific country you are visiting and use your best judgement as the food safety and precautions can vary.
We use the US State Department Country Information pages as a resource before traveling to a new country. When you search a country, the Health section has Water Quality information.
Any advice for dealing with food poisoning or sickness while traveling? What have you done when you’ve been sick on the road and found yourself dreaming of home?
