Tim Macartney-Snape reckons planning on how to access water is as important as actually drinking it.
I’m on record admitting that I’m a habitual offender when it comes to not drinking enough. Now before you label me a wowser, I could recount tales of other drinking adventures but here I’m talking water. Due to having a virtual absence of body fat, I’m a two-pot screamer when it comes to alcohol so it won’t cost you much to take me out on the town!
But with regards to drinking water, apropos of summer being upon us, I have somewhat overcome my bad habits and one thing that has helped me do this – apart from a little discipline – is having a good-looking water bottle with a very convenient flip-up bite valve to suck on.
Being third on our list of vital needs to sustain life (after oxygen and stable temperature), it isn’t surprising that water figures prominently in any discussion about survival. You can’t do without it for long, it’s heavy and doesn’t occur everywhere in drinkable quantity or purity so planning ahead is required. You will almost always need to take a water bottle (or two) away with you.
These days it has become all too common just to buy bottled water, especially when we’re overseas. Empty PET water bottles can be seen littering byways in almost every corner of the planet, from Borneo to Bordeaux (to paraphrase Ian Drury); indeed their ubiquity is now synonymous with litter and seems to be getting inexorably worse.
I was western China a while back en-route from the wilds of the central Karakoram. Making the most of a spare day in Kashgar, I made a trip out to the weird and fantastic hills to the north. The loose conglomerate of the range has been eroded into deep canyons with vertical walls and high in the range is Shipton’s Arch, with a gap 365m high, the world’s largest.
Though only rediscovered a little over a decade ago, there is a well-worn track up the canyon that is too easy to follow on account of the abundance of discarded water bottles. Surely the bottled water phenomenon – where in most cases readily available tap water is given a quick UV sterilising pass, bottled in plastic with fancy print and marketed as ‘pure natural spring water’ then sold for more than 10 times its original value – is a great insight into the foibles of human nature and our gullibility to the seduction of marketing.
Okay, I’ll concede the convenience of not having to sterilise water but it has been known for bottled water to be unsterilised and these days there are very effective, commonly available, easy to use UV sterilising gadgets available, some even built in to the bottle!
A few years ago, the town of Bundanoon banned bottled water from sale in its few shops. News of this previously unthinkable act aired and was printed worldwide: the reaction was unanimously positive, other towns vowed to follow suit and it was touted as the beginning of the end for this rort.
I might be wrong but I haven’t noticed any difference – we seem to be suckers for short-term convenience. But it must be asked: how inconvenient is having a water bottle and filling it up before you leave, and what sort of example do we set our children when we buy water in disposable bottles?
Also, when buying water it’s all too easy and tempting to reach for that cleverly packaged sugary alternative that may titillate the tastebuds but will send your calorie intake through the roof and most likely see you visiting the dentist sooner than hoped. Do yourself a favour – get a bottle you like the look of and get in the habit!
Words_Tim Macartney-Snape