Taking a toddler to Goa

SPEND five days and nights in a hot room in a dusty town with a toddler struck by Delhi belly and you will never want to see India again. In a child not out of nappies, it is shit on a quite epic and distressing scale. And that’s just for the mother.

Goa looks lovely, but I overlooked one obvious thing before deciding to go there: it’s in India. India might look pretty, but nowhere does poo on the streets, poo in the food, poo on the beach like an Indian village. Quite why I thought Ellie, at two years and four months, would avoid the inevitable I am not sure — perhaps because we weren’t travelling around much, we were only going to the coast, er . . . there were lots of us.

Which meant lots of children to get diarrhoea and, in retrospect, it was inevitable that at least one of the ten kids in our party would fall ill. No matter how good the doctors are — and they are good, and fast, and cheap, £2 a visit — and no matter how good the hospital, which I’m happy to say I didn’t quite need but which came highly recommended by other parents — no matter how wonderful the entire Indian healthcare system is, you don’t want to spend your holiday getting to know it.

They might have had the best drips in world, but when it looked, after five days without food and barely a drop to drink, as if my wasted daughter was going to have to go on one, I was ready to fly home. I was all set to get her out of the heat and put her in an English hospital if necessary instead. Did I feel guilty? Yes. And stupid. When I had the photographs developed a few months after coming home, I was shocked at the pale and sweaty ghost child I saw.

So I would caution any parent of young children to think twice before taking them to India. But that said, no other child in our party was as ill — although most had edgy stomachs some of the time.

A group of us decided to make the trip: it started out being three families and ended up as six or seven. Sally, Nicola and I brought six children aged from seven months to seven, as well as Sally’s partner Paulie’s teenage daughter. Anna from Brighton brought two kids; Rebecca had another toddler; and then my daughter Ellie’s godmother decided to fly over from Singapore for a long weekend. Then Paulie had vaguely mentioned to Rob, Sally had vaguely told Caz, and Caz had a friend in the north . . . all headed for Patnem, a beautiful stretch in southern Goa where the village spills on to the sand, for the fortnight. For someone whose ideal of a holiday is to talk to absolutely no one, it could have been a nightmare — two weeks of communal banana pancakes and parties by the sea, sprinkled with repeated hippy tales.

Given that I spent most of the first week sweating it out in a bedroom with Ellie, the communal aspect turned out to be the least of my worries. Other than making trips to the pharmacy to collect the latest antibiotics/anti-bacterial thingies, there wasn’t a lot my friends could do to help: a sick toddler is a clingy toddler.

With much of central Goa blighted by the package-tour trade, you have to head farther south or north to find peace. Patnem is all wooden huts and swinging beds, hammocks and restaurants called Cheeky Chapatis or Dancing Shivas, selling mostly Indian food, a couple of quid for a fish curry.

Book a charter flight, throw away the hotel voucher, take a taxi south from the airport for an hour and a half and ask to be dropped at the beach. It is lined with places to stay, mostly fairly basic huts, 300-3,000 rupees (£3.50-£35) a night. If what you don’t get is luxury — there are power cuts every day — what you do get is hundreds of metres of sand and sea lapping at your doorstep.

Jump into a tuk-tuk and clatter your way to one of the unspoilt beaches: white sand, the sea, a cow, and you. My daughter learnt four new words that fortnight: tuk-tuk, papaya, Coca-Cola — and diarrhoea.

Need to know

Getting there: Cosmos (0870 4431823) uses Monarch charter flights to Goa. Prices from £365 for flights and one night room-only. Thomson (0870 1900737) has similar deals from £339.

Staying there: Home (00 91 832 264 3916). On the beach, simple rooms, superb food; from £11.

Staying healthy

Upset stomachs, leading to diarrhoea, are far more dangerous in a baby or child than in an adult since fluids make up a larger proportion of children’s body mass. If they have diarrhoea, make up a drink with oral rehydration sachets (such as Dioralyte), and if the outbreak seems serious, or if you cannot get your child to drink, consult a doctor.

Further information: Travellers’ Health — How to Stay Healthy Abroad by Dr Richard Dawood (OUP, £16.99). The Times Holiday Handbook by Cath Urquhart, published on September 18 (£12.95) by Navigator Guides.