Food poisoning is such a common incidence when you are travelling and I have been victim of it numerous times. Those were mild ones.

Ethiopia’s traditional food called the ‘Ingera’ characteristically consist of spicy vegetables and spicy meats served atop the ingera, a form of bread, to be precise a large flat bread made of sour dough. Utensils are rarely used with this dish as the people use the injera to pick up the side dishes with their fingers and I like this dish a lot because of it simplicity and because it reminds me of chapatti and takkari, something frequently eaten in Nepal.

I was around the Ma Galabad border when I felt a prance of hunger. It was 11.30am, time for lunch. It was a small town of about 15 to 20 houses and I found a tiny restaurant. I order the injera because that was what I had been eating and I enjoy the dish quite a lot. When the dish came, I thought it looked weird and tasted way too much sour for an Injera bread but nevertheless I still ate it because I was hungry but mostly because I feel it is very disrespectful for me to not finish my food and also because plenty of people are starving in this part of the country.

By 2pm, I had reached my hotel room and I was weirdly hungry again. My body felt like it was beaten with iron rods, every breath felt like it was the last one. It got so bad at one point; I called my wife, daughters and family back in Nepal at 8pm, local time. It was dreadful. My wife urged me to stopped the tour altogether and come back home. We said goodbyes with a very heavy heart; it was the worst day of my life.

I could not fall asleep. There was a rush of my stomach contents both upwards and downwards. I was stuck in the toilet. It was insanity. Some time in the middle of rushing back and forth the bed and the toilet, I fell asleep not knowing if I was going to wake up in the morning. I was in severe pain, in total agony. I woke up a lot light headed, so much better. I felt well. I had never been in such intense pain, the worse I suffered was in Ecuador but even then, the sting was hundred times less.

When I reached Addis Ababa, one of the first things I did was visit the doctor’s. They asked me to give my samples of urine and faeces. The result came out with my small intestines infected with ‘worms’. They were breeding and getting bigger. It was posing a great danger to my body. But now, they are slowly getting killed by the medication I am taking as we speak. I am feeling so much healthier and I am still eating injeras here in the capital city. One bad incident should not deter me and one bad experience does not mean bad experiences all the time and like I have said before, it is too delicious to just give up on the traditional food of Ethiopia and Eritrea.