Still hate hand-washing and still not good at it
Doing laundry and a bath, Indian style
I love overland travel, but there are some drawbacks. As far as I’m concerned, the biggest pain is hand-washing.
Geez, I hate doing laundry. But I also hate being gouged. When someone wants to charge me 50 cents to do a crappy job of washing my socks or a pair of undies, I decide that I might as well do my own crappy job for free.
Laundry drying on a rooftop
So I’ve done laundry all through India. Luckily there was a scrub brush on the van, so I was able to give the really, really dirty parts some tough love. Not that it made much difference.
I laid Poor John’s super grubby camping pants on the bathroom floor and tackled them with the scrub brush. The backs of the legs, from the calf down, were probably the filthiest I’d ever seen. The scrubbing did not make one grain-of-dirt difference. When he put them on after they had dried, they looked as if they hadn’t been touched with a brush, let alone soap and water.
ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGH
Laundry at the caretaker’s place in a mosque. The woman (in green) on the right is in the midst of praying
These pants might get washed at home—or thrown away. As Poor John graciously said, Things aren’t meant to last forever.
If you follow this blog, you probably already know how much I detest hand-washing and how bad I am at it. The episode in Burkina Faso is a good example.
But I still love laundry—I mean I love looking at laundry. Surely there’s a need in the world for a book of 1000 clotheslines you must see before you die.
And I must remember to share the delightful article in the Sydney Morning Herald, discussing the merits of a well-hung clothesline.
For now I’m sharing some of my Indian laundry shots. Just wish I snapped more pics of clothes drying on bushes, lawns, trees and rooftops.
Laundry does have some positives aspects. We were invited to a wedding while I was hanging out laundry on the rooftop of a hostel.
Where to next? 
I will always remember the horror I felt the first time I saw my bras and undies hanging to dry in the kitchen of my host family’s home in Chile. Host dad and host teenage brother just strolling by my unmentionables… Took me awhile to get used to that!
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I bet it did, but it’s amazing how you adjust and then become blasé about certain things. I no longer care who sees my ‘smalls’, which really aren’t all that small these days. 🙂
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LeggyPeggy – Watching someone else’s laundry blowing in the breeze is so much more peaceful than the actual washing part 🙂 (I think Poor John should stay away from mud) -Susan
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I’ll pass on your message to Poor John, but it’s almost impossible to avoid mud when you’re on an overland trip.
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