Grayl and Lifestraw Water bottle sitting on a wooden ledge
Grayl and Lifestraw Water bottle sitting on a wooden ledge

How to Get Safe Drinking Water When Traveling

If you are planning a trip, you might be wondering how to ensure access to safe drinking water on your travels.

For example, you might be planning a backcountry camping trip, a hiking trip, or a trip overseas where you aren’t sure if the tap water is safe to drink.

Whatever the reason, access to safe drinking water is critically important to your well-being and health.  Sometimes the available water might not be safe for human consumption or other uses like brushing your teeth or cooking.

In these scenarios, you are likely going to have to take some steps to treat the water to make it safe. In this guide, we’re going to go through the whole topic of water purification from a travel perspective.

We’ll start with resources on discovering if the water will be safe to drink on your trip and how to learn what the main risks are. We’ll then go through the various options you have for making water safe to drink when traveling, covering the advantages and disadvantages of a number of methods.

Finally, we’ll finish up with a number of recommendations for different products that can be used to treat water when traveling to help you decide which might be best for your needs.

This is all based on our personal experience traveling around the world, as well as extensive research using information from trusted sources like government agencies.

By the end of this post, you should know if you need to consider a water treatment method for your next trip, and if so, which one is going to meet your needs and budget!

If you are interested in learning more, find the complete post written by Laurence Norah here.

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Bloggers & Photographers
Finding the Universe

Hi there! We’re Laurence and Jessica Norah, we’re full-time professional travel bloggers & photographers, and we’re the couple behind Finding The Universe & Independent Travel Cats.

We’ve been running this site since 2010, sharing travel tips, destination guides, photography tips, and lots more.

Everything we write is based on our own personal travel experiences and using our own photos.

We visit all the places we write about (usually multiple times), cover our own costs (except in very rare circumstances), and share what we know to help you plan your own independent adventures around the world. We also do our best to keep our content up to date and as accurate as possible.

Our main focus on our blogs is travel in Europe and the USA, as well as photography tips and advice. However we do cover other parts of the world as well as you can see by checking out our destinations page.

Media Mentions

Why use a plastic bag when you can simply screw on this end cap, specifically designed for Sawyer water filters?

Zoe Gates
Editor at Backpacker

Media Mentions

In future, I’ll use gravity when I can, and squeeze when I have to.

Richard, aka "LowRange
Hiker

Media Mentions

For longer hikes, it’s convenient to carry a small backcountry water filter, such as a Sawyer Mini or Micro, which allows you to replenish your water from natural sources like streams or ponds.

Philip Werner
Author and Backpacker