Navdeep Taking a Swig

My drink of choice is whiskey. It trumps any other drink in the room. If it’s Jack, I’ll have it with coke. But would never do that with Scotch. That’s just sacrilege. Ideally, I’ll have it in a tumbler, with some ice, and club soda. Punjabi ishtyle. It is much too expensive and too respectable a drink to warrant chugging it straight from a bottle in a brown paper bag.

Vodka, however, holds a very special place for me. It isn’t just because it’s cheap and requires no thought process since you can have it straight, with ice, or can mix it with absolutely anything. It’s because vodka is a traveler’s best friend. Hence, it is my best friend, and I always seek it out no matter what part of the world I am in.

I was on the Trans-Siberian, the longest railway line in the world, several years ago, and quickly realized that the stereotype of Russians being “vodka mad” is an understatement. Vodka on the Trans-Siberian is a way of life. Without it, you’re an outcast. And drinking anything other than vodka is justification for getting beaten up. People all over the train, myself included, would wake up in the morning with a bottle from the night before in one hand, and a toothbrush in the other as they took giant swigs to start their mornings off. I met some very interesting people, including a couple of lads who tried getting me to deboard the train in Vladivostok so they could have a laugh as I was stranded there in my Mr. potato-head pajamas. Yes, when I got back on, half-frozen, I was not happy, but ended up having a great time with them as soon as they offered up their vodka. There were plenty of other people I met who didn’t try and swindle me, all while bonding over vodka at all times of the day. But by the end of it, I needed a break. I was even willing to try this drink called water for a little while afterwards. During the last legs of my Trans-Siberian trip, I found some fascinating uses of vodka which I still incorporate today during travels or if I’m feeling nostalgic for being on the road. It’s a complete waste and very offensive if you do this with vodka that costs more than a few dollars, but here are seven very useful things to use cheap vodka for when you’re done drinking it:

1) Clean your camera lenses, the screen on your laptop , iPad, or iPhone. Stop using water, which leaves streaks, or buying expensive sprays.
Tip: dab a bit of vodka on a soft cloth (or fill a small spray bottle. This can can also work as an insect repellent).

2) Insect Repellent. None of the chemical sprays, like “Bug Off” available in India helped to keep the mosquitos off for me or Sona. Applying big goops of petroleum jelly (Vaseline) to your legs, arms, and face does the trick though, by making you very unappetizing to the mosquitos as they slip right off you when they try and sink their teeth into you. But it also makes you very unappetizing to the rest of the human race.
Tip: An alternative is to do the same thing as #1: dump the contents of something like “Bug Off” and fill it with vodka. Spray yourself with it. Can also be used to kill bugs big and small by spraying it directly on them. This includes bees and wasps.

3) Bollocks to deodorant and laundry. Before her concerts, Madonna douses her clothes in vodka. No, the Material girl is not bonkers. It’s a great travel tip to avoid, or at least minimize doing laundry on the road (or at home) unless you have OCD. Sona definitely doesn’t have OCD as she has no problem with magazines flung all over the place, or clothes all over the bed, so long as everything is clean. Sona is absolutely mental about doing the laundry, sometimes for clothes I might be wearing at the time. And she must do it with Tide. If she wasn’t such a fanatic about it, I’d use vodka on our clothes much more often (I sneak it in a fair amount though!).
Tip: Spraying vodka on socks, shirts, undershirts, trousers, underwear, etc, kills bacteria. If your clothes are genuinely dirty, they must be washed. If you have the energy, go Madonna style and drench your clothes in vodka, then hang them up in your room or a balcony. Can also be used to sort out odor in your clothes from things like cigarette smoke and can even get rid of fish smells. It also does a band up job of eliminating foot odor, or stinky feet syndrome.

4) Combat traveler’s diarrhea, a.k.a. Holiday Tummy, Delhi-Belly, Montezuma’s Revenge, Mummy-Tummy, and my personal favourite, “yalla-yalla” (Arabic for “quickly-quickly).
Tip: Take a few sips of vodka to keep the nausea at bay. For best results, mix it with club soda to get the fizziness of the soda and the anti-septic qualities from the soda. Mixing in pepper makes it taste horrible, but does help as well.

5) Painless Bandage (plaster) removal. I used to hate getting bandages because of the way they would stick to the cut when you’d have to remove it. Vodka to the rescue.
Tip: Put a little vodka on the bandage and it’ll dissolve the stickiness resulting in painless bandage removal. Voila!

6) For Hair So Healthy, It Shines. In many countries, you can easily find shampoo and conditioner these days, but finding travel sized conditioner is still a tough one. You could just buy travel size containers and fill them up as you go along. Or treat your hair with a bit more respect than that.
Tip: Add one part vodka to a shampoo bottle. Stir. Do not drink. It works just like conditioner, only better, and results in clean and shiny hair.

7) Sort that toothache, earache, or cold sore out. The most annoying thing about these ailments is the continual pain. You can’t just sleep it off. And the common misperception is that you have to walk into a pharmacy and get medicine to take care of it. The scary thing is that in many pharmacies in Asia and Eastern Europe, the standard is to prescribe antibiotics (and not the full course) for minor things like these. So if something big does go down, antibiotics will do nothing for you. Good news: Vodka is here!
Tips:
Toothache- just take a swig of vodka and it’ll get rid of a toothache. Or dab the tooth if you want to be sure.

Earache- pour a few drops of vodka in your ear, wait a few minutes, and then drain it (never use a q-tip in your ear. Unless you’re a plonker, in which case you can do what you like with it).

Cold Sore – For a cold sore, use a q-tip dabbed in vodka and apply to the infected area.

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