Shot Please (and maybe one for Rabies too)

🐶 Dog Bite in Jaipur: Why Travel Vaccines Matter (And Why You Always Pack an eSIM)

Quick one for anyone heading overseas soon: get your vaccinations sorted before you go.

Years ago, I was travelling through India with a mate — total opposites. I had everything planned down to the bathroom breaks. He didn’t even pack socks.

Somehow it worked. Until Jaipur. Where I got bitten by a stray dog. On the street. Out of nowhere. Just boom — dog teeth, leg, panic.

Luckily our tuk tuk driver (absolute legend — see photo below) zipped us across town to this amazing little clinic. That’s where I met Dr Panicker (not joking — that was his name - you can look him up), who calmly explained that because I wasn’t already vaccinated for rabies, they’d have to inject... the actual bite wound 🤮. Like, directly. With a pretty chunky needle.

Not ideal.

He gave me this cooler bag packed with ice bricks and a bunch of syringes (not joking - it's called Rabipur), and he was like:

"Keep these cold. Don’t lose them."

I didn’t trust my mate to jab me, so for the next few weeks I basically went on a tour of Indian clinics from Jaipur, Agra & Delhi— one rabies injection at a time. I had to space them out across different cities on specific days.

I think there were four or five in total, in the arm after the first one. It’s a bit of a blur now, but I definitely remember carrying that little cooler bag around like it was treasure.

In the end, I didn’t get rabies. Or lockjaw. Or die. So... success?

But honestly — it would’ve been so much easier (and cheaper) if I’d just gotten vaccinated before I left.

If you're heading to India, Southeast Asia, or anywhere with dogs, monkeys, or other bitey wildlife — get the rabies vax. Just in case.

And while you’re at it, check these too:

• 🧪 Hep A & B
• 🧪 Typhoid
• 🧪 Tetanus
• 🧪 Japanese Encephalitis
• 🧪 Whatever else your travel clinic says after giving you the “are you serious?” face

Also: grab your eSIM before you go. It won’t save you from a dog bite, but it will help you Google “nearest rabies clinic open now” when you're sweating in a tuk tuk with an ice pack full of needles.

Safe travels — and if anything goes wrong, I hope your tuk tuk driver is as much of a hero as mine.

🧡 Verity from Simify