The pants of India.

Wearing ali baba pants in India is just one of those ‘must do’ things... You go to India, you buy ali baba pants and wear them everywhere. It is not the traditional clothing but has somehow become connected to the travelling cult that invades India each year.

I bought my first pair in Kolkata after being in India for one month. I was in. I looked like I belonged to the travelling hippy cult. Little did I know the complications these pants would possess...

For once, i thought I was prepared. I was travelling on a motorbike and thought long pants were necessary. I was not wrong, they were. What I was wrong about was thinking that riding a motorbike wearing 10 bolts of material around my legs would be easy. As I went to sit down on the bike seat something stopped it. It was like wearing a skirt and trying to sit. There was a big clod of material stopping me from sitting. So I yanked up the ali baba pants and sat trying to keep the extra material away from the engine in fear of them lighting on fire. I wondered if anyone else had this problem? Maybe everyone wearing them were just to cool to wear anything else! 

The biggest problem occurred when it was time to use the squat toilets. Squating is difficult enough for a westerner and with the metres of material in between, wearing the Ali Baba pants surely made squatting a trying task. Once balanced and in position, it was then a matter of holding up the material and keeping it out of aim. Fortunately by the end of my stay I managed the squat toilet while in ali baba pants, needless to say it did take some attempts to get it right!

Finally, every travellers most hated chore. Hand washing. Generally with a bucket and some of your shampoo it was never an enjoyable task and the ali baba pants again proved useless in the washing department. After twisting and twirling them to get all the water out, due to the excessive amount of material, the average drying time was far beyond the other clothes and often they ended up in your pack still damp and of course smelling when you got to your next destination.

Note to self- wear Ali Baba pants to look cool but know that they aren’t convenient in any way.