34/ 100 Washing Line Dog

When we travel we often like to go to places and involve ourselves in journeys that steer clear of luxury and tourist-only destinations. I don’t want to go and sit on a beach (I can do that here in Scotland), nor do I want to go to a fancy hotel and live in an upmarket bubble, isolated from the scary world outside until my tour bus comes to take me to all the sanctioned locations.

I know that lots of people love that kind of holiday. I am sure my wife would prefer a trip like that every now and again (sorry Fiona). It really isn’t for me though. I want to come home and feel as though I have actually come slightly closer to seeing what a place is actually like.

Something that happens to us whenever we head off on an adventure is that life becomes less cluttered. All of our belongings are in just one or two bags. We don’t need to do much, if any, housekeeping. The format of the day is simplified into deciding where to have breakfast and choosing destinations for that particular day. Sometimes we don’t even have a destination to worry about; instead we simply wander around a place trying to be as open as we can to any interesting opportunities.

There is, however, always one task that is inescapable if you are away from home for more than a week and don’t have one of those giant suitcases you sometimes see at the airport that practically dwarf their owners.

Laundry.

Eventually you’ll be down to your last pair of underpants, you’ll have used up all your t-shirts and you can no longer ignore the little patch of ketchup that you spilled on the front of your trousers on the plane seven days ago.

The downside to our less luxurious choices of travel and accommodation is that almost none of the places we stayed in had a washing machine. Then there’s the humbling fact that the launderettes in places like Varanasi weren’t launderettes at all – they were a room with a couple of folk who would wash your clothes completely by hand. There was no way I would expect anyone to have to wash my clothes for me, so I would always wash our clothes by hand myself.

I would make a quick trip to one of those tiny wee shops that sell everything you could ever need that are so ubiquitous in India. They are always inside a space smaller than a wardrobe but the shopkeeper would know exactly where every single thing was. After a few hand signals – usually tugging at my shirt whilst saying ‘wash’ – I would be furnished with a little 10 pence sachet of the local variety of washing powder.

The sachets were intended for a single load of washing but there always seems to be such an incredible amount in there that we normally split it into two washes worth. Then it’s back to the room which, helpfully, always has a jug and a bucket or two in it for mysterious bodily washing techniques that we have never quite figured out. Just like Thailand, these plastic vessels are always the most lurid colours and patterns you could ever imagine.

Crouching on the floor of the bathroom, which was always a wet-room so it was quite easy to wash and rinse the clothes without flooding the place, I would wash about five days-worth of clothes. Honestly, I actually quite enjoyed doing it. For a few days at least.

Then, after a couple of weeks, it seems as though I can’t keep on top of all the washing. Even though I have just emptied the laundry bag it is already full again. How does that happen? There always comes a point where we both lay out all our clean clothes and count up the number of days left until we get home, hoping that we have exactly the right number of pants and shirts left to go. It is about this time that I realise that one of the greatest inventions in the world surely must be the washing machine.

When we arrive home we simply throw in a load of clothes, press a button and all the work I used to do manually, crouching in those bathrooms, just gets done without me having to think about it. If it’s raining outside I can even use our drier to dry the clothes regardless.

I genuinely have great respect for the hard work people used to have to put in to make sure that they, and their families, were kept in clean clothes. And, of course, even today there are huge numbers of people who still wash every single thing by hand. You see loads and loads of people in India washing and drying everything by hand. I am glad I don’t have to unless I really want to.