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If you are a woman who loves to travel, chances are you have a toilet story to narrate! Can our simple wish for a clean loo be fulfilled?
Travel is an integral part of all our lives, more so for some and less frequent for others. As an Army wife and daughter, I have covered Delhi, Hyderabad, Srinagar, Shillong, Indore, Jodhpur, Nasik and Coimbatore, all by road, travelling through some of the best and worst roads this country has to offer as long as I can remember. But, the roads are the least of my worries when I travel.
As a woman and an avid lover of road trips, fresh, clean water, good wholesome food, safe pit stops and pucca roads also feature on my list. Plus, lots of small towns on the way that really need some clean, comfortable rooms, but that is another story.
The biggest thing on my wish list when I travel (and really the most basic of all) – is a clean toilet!
Travelling through the plains of central India, on a trip to Hyderabad, the dry hot sun had baked the land, just waiting for the rains to come and drench the landscape. The flat terrain might be great for a drive but not for me as the level landscape did not have any decent toilets on the way; petrol pumps with their dingy loos were also few and far in-between. We met up with the rain somewhere in between Bhopal and Hyderabad but rain only added to my worries! It was now impossible for me to get to a secluded, covered, dry spot, which did not make me feel that all the drivers were watching me as they drove by; especially the trucks!
I have braved many such trips and went to answer nature’s call wherever my hubby found sufficient cover; I have traipsed over the obstacles on the fields looking for the next big bush so I could squat down and do my business! I remember that I also had to stomp around to flatten the ground where I was going to fertilize the area and not my shoes; lots of pointy grass around when you are that close to Mother Nature!
There is more worry for a woman on the road who needs to pee: imagining the dreaded UTI, squatting between the two open doors of your car due lack of cover, extreme thigh stretch when trying to pee in a dirty loo from mid air! I could get toned legs just from doing it every day. Luckily I don’t travel that much any more.
When I heard about the Shewee, I realized that all my prayers were answered. Developed by a UK based woman entrepreneur, Samantha Fountain, it is a device that lets any woman do her business standing up like a man and without peeling away layers of clothing. Bad knees, dirty, stinky loos, even not having a loo are no problem at all with a Shewee in your purse or travel bag. (Yes, I have even contemplated doing it in a jar but getting all the clothes off stopped me, and the storage, damn!)
…it is a device that lets any woman do her business standing up like a man and without peeling away layers of clothing.
I tried out the Shewee and found it such an easy, simple and clean device that helped me to do my business with no fuss and hang-ups! Imagine the freedom of standing by the side of a tree or just facing away to do our business. Be it any part of our country, even the absolutely straight and flat roads or the curvy mountains where no matter where you sit, someone is sitting higher up, this simple plastic device is a very handy companion for female travellers. I am sure men accompanying them too will heave a sigh of relief as they can now watch the road rather than look for suitably dense foliage every two hours.
Had we had access to a Shewee back then, I would not have hounded my husband and threatened to ‘pee in the car’ if he did not stop right now! Neither would I have had to hold it for six hours on a bumpy road. (There were sand dunes that time, no green cover.)
For me and scores of women who love to travel, especially to offbeat spots with minimal facilities, Shewee is a great find. Young or old, I don’t need to worry about bad loos ever again. I will be doing it standing up and my knees will thank me umpteen times (yes, middle age is catching up but that can’t stop me!)
This post has been supported by Privyshop, an online store which stocks products that customers may feel shy buying from physical stores. Some of the featured Brands are Daisy Dee, Eco-Femme, Everteen, Helen Harper, Mederma, Nurture, Red Rose, Shewee and Sofy. Privyshop offers cash on delivery option from many pincodes and online payment orders anywhere in India. It is advisable to use the Shewee first at home before using it outdoors comfortably.
Top image of a toilet sign via Shutterstock
Inderpreet writes for her love of writing, edits manuscripts and reads endlessly. An authors' editor with a decade of experience, she provides manuscript critique, linguistic editing, substantive editing and developmental editing for fiction and nonfiction. read more...
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Children should be taught to aspire to be successful, but success doesn't have to mean an IIT admission only!
Imagine studying for 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 whole years for the JEE exam only to find out that there’s only a very, very slim chance of getting into an IIT. It is a fact widely acknowledged that the IIT-JEE is one of the toughest exams not just in India but in the whole world. Apart from IITs, the NITs and IIITs of India also accept the JEE scores for admission. There are said to be a total of 23 IITs, 31 NITs and 25 IIITs across the country.
Now, let’s first get a few facts about the IITs right. First, according to the NIRF rankings of 2023, only 17 IITs rank in the top 50 engineering colleges of India and only a few (around 5) IITs are in the list of the world’s top 100 engineering colleges. Second, the dropout rate of IIT-qualifying students stands at least at 20%, with reasons being cited ranging from academic pressure and unmanageable workload to caste discrimination and high levels of competition within the IIT.
So, it’s quite clear that the journey of making it through IIT is as challenging as the journey of getting into an IIT. Third and most important of all, the acceptance rate or the odds of getting into an IIT are below 3% which is a lot lower than the acceptance rate of highly and very highly ranked US universities. Four, getting into an IIT of one’s choice doesn’t mean one will also get into a branch of one’s preference at that IIT.
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