 Drinking
Water
It is important that you keep yourself hydrated
during your camping trips. You need to drink a lot of water
to stay healthy. 3 to 4 liters of water or about a gallon would
be a good idea. It is important to know if the water you are
drinking is safe.
The water available to you will differ from place to place.
For camping with large groups, remember there are no organized
camping grounds in the region, hence you will not find a camping
ground with pure potable water.
For most camping programs our water sources
is a streams or a spring. Such water tastes wonderful, better
than any packaged water. But such water is known to contain
a lot of Protozoa and larger parasites, bacteria, and viruses.
As you go downstream into the plains, the pollutants in the
water increase. But even in the hills, drinking water directly
from the source without treating it first may get you quite
ill.
 naturebeyond
uses several methods to get rid of the 'water hazards'.
1. Boiling the water. This is the easiest way
to remove the potential hazardous material. But the taste of
the boiled water may not seem that good. The water must boil
for at least five minutes. Boiling is done by naturebeyond for
small group camping.
2. Chemical Purification of the water by adding
bleach or iodine to the water is also effective. This is a easy
solution to the water problem, but the water must not be taken
immediately after adding the chemical. For warm water you need
to wait for about 20 minutes before drinking it, for cold water,
the wait period would stretch to several hours. naturebeyond
uses chemical purification for large group camps.
3. We also use filter for the camps. But the
quantity filtered is not very large and you might have to wait
for sometime before getting your glass of water. The filters
also do not remove all types of warms from the water. But the
water tastes best when filtered.
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