Okay, so: here is the facilities in my hotel room.I have to say up front that bathroom concerns weighed on my mind when I first set out for India. I had heard stories and seen movies. And the whole left-hand thing was very troublesome to me. It's easy to picture a scene where you have Deli Belly and have to rely on lefty to get clean and I was very upset about having to do that.
So, the first thing I did when I checked in is run to the toily to see what was what. There are several things I want to point out to you in the above picture. First, there are two buttons above the commode; a large one and a small one. The larger one makes the water (which is very vigorous) run longer. So; bigger job, bigger button.
Second you might have noticed the thing that looks like the hose by the sink in your kitchen. I don't know what they call that, but it is apparently a common device. Obviously, it's like a bidet but with a manual aspect. It shoots only cold water, but there is a handle that controls the pressure. Now- there is toilet paper in the picture and they have that here, but they clearly are not big into it. Even here at this swank hotel the paper is rather coarse and harder to come by.
I haven't tried the hose-thing yet, but feel that as a traveller it is my duty to have new experiences. So, at some point I will, but not today. Frankly, I have some questions about aiming and drying.
Now, other places have different arrangements and we all snoop around to see what's what where we go. There have been the usual funny stick figure signs that show you the proper use of such devices and a fun "toilet karma" sign that outlined some do's and don'ts. I will try to get pix of that as well.
But the short story is - no lefty so far, no Deli Belly for that matter either: things are fine.
upcountry Liberia had very few toilets (outhouses or septic systems) other than at the missionaries' haunts and the occasional government facility, then came an influx of Peace corps-ites with an organization who demanded that its members wastes were sacred and must be enshrined in small shrines called "outhouses!"
ReplyDeleteYou might well imagine what native construction people built as outhouses! with no real model outhouse was available to guide them. They were all quite different and sometimes wonderful!
My recurring nightmare was that one of the local snake 'clan' take a fancy for the place and being a territorial defender doing what comes naturally--'piercing the moon'. while my gluteus maximus remained entact--except for
getting down to 117 lbs when I had dysentery-- my concerns about outhouses lingered in my nightmares for a while!
you might make a mental note to photo some of these cultural externalities that vary. tally ho!