Matt and I are sitting in our hotel room, watching an episode of “Winnie-the-Pooh” dubbed into Hindi. To my untrained ear, it sounds like gibberish interspersed by high-pitched squeals of “Christopher Robin!”

I’m curled up under a sheet, somehow simultaneous hot and shivering. I spent the morning shooting interviews with team members on the roof sans water, and ended up sunburned and nauseous, edging on collapse. While my methods were unwise, my timing was fortuitous: the festival concludes today in a spasm of drinking and fireworks, and after the roads were closed, the team was sequestered for safety at the hotel for most of the afternoon. I curled up atop the hotel covers and awoke to darkness, feeling… “refreshed” isn’t the word. “Alive.” I am decidedly not dead.

I’m starting to think that maybe this wasn’t as good an idea as I thought it would be.

We’ve been packed tight inside this crowd for an hour now, moving, always moving. My hands have stiffened into claws from gripping the camera so tightly, and my arms are starting to shake from holding it protectively aloft for so long.

Behind me, a hand makes a quick, exploratory dive into my back pocket, looking for cash. I’d spin to face the would-be thief, but experience has taught me that by the time I turned, I would be met only with a sea of blank faces. 

I’m regretting bringing my passport and wallet along. I’ve kept them with me every step of my journey so far - for safety, I thought - and they sit in their regular spots, wedged deep in my front pockets. But I know that should any enterprising pickpocket make a grab for one, I’d never get my hands down in time to stop them. I should ask my guide, King, to hold on to them for me, but then I’d have to admit that I’d felt hands reaching into my other pockets, and I’m sure that King will force us to leave once he hears that. I jam the items deeper into my pockets and hope that this doesn’t become a story about “that time Ben had to live on the streets in India for three months, then came home to crippling credit card debt.”

The week has just begun, but it seems I’ve heard this song a hundred times already. It would help if it wasn’t the same verse, over and over, time after time. No amount of adding hand motions changes the fact that it’s the same, monotone chant in constant refrain. On a day like today (clap, clap) on a daaaaay like todaaaaay (clap, clap) on a daaaaaaaaay like tooooodaaaaaaaayyyy (clap clap) oooooooooooooh, I need Jesus!

The children love it. Really, they love Matt, who leads the song with palpable joy, waving his hands and clowning about. Some people lead children’s songs with pasted smiles, but you can feel Matt feed on the laughter. His smile gets bigger, his arms swing wider, so wide that he clocks Sarah in the stomach as we finish a verse (she won’t stand next to him during the song for the rest of the week). His singing, unfortunately, gets worse, as he abandons the notes altogether and develops a tuneless yell for the last half of the song. ON A DAAAAAAAAAAY LIKE TOOODAAAAAAAAAY! Some of the older kids abandon the hand motions in order to stick their fingers in their ears.