While Mom visited a friend in the southern India city of Coimbatore, I went on photo safaris around Delhi, hiring taxis and rikshaws and sometimes just walking around. One day I hired a rikshaw driver to take me to photograph a slum area I had seen earlier, and on the way back we passed two men running what appeared to me to be a lemonade stand. I asked about it, and we stopped so the driver could show me what was going on. He asked if I wanted to try their drink, "very good for hot day," and since it was over 100 degrees I said yes. It was the first and last food I ate from the streets of Delhi.

One of the men hopped up when we approached and started whacking a bull on the back with a stick. The bull lumbered forward in a circle, strapped to the log running through the top of the grinding device shown here. The other man fed sugar cane into the grinder, where it was pulverized into a sugary juice that collected in the steel bowl to the right.

After they had enough for my drink, the man running the grinder poured the liquid into a glass tumbler and added a dash of salt by hand. He then used a large knife to break a chunk of ice off a large block sitting in the shade, and put the chunk of ice in the tumbler. Looking around for something to stir with, he found a wet spoon on a wood plank and used it to mix up my drink.

The salt and sugar and cold tasted great in the heat, but my lack of caution caught up with me. That was the most sick I ever got on that 5-week trip, after drinking that cup of sugar-cane juice.