Time for a story about the best, worst non-alcoholic drink I ever had.
About 15 years ago I was working on a client project in Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad is a large city of about 10 million people located near the geographical center of India. It's basically the Silicon Valley of India and there are a ton of tech companies and prestigious Indian universities there. The climate is a dry, high desert and the population is an interesting mix of Hindus and Muslims. Like most of India, it has a rich and fascinating history going back centuries if not millennia.
One of the prominent historical sites in Hyderabad is an amazing medieval fortress called Golconda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golconda_Fort
During one of our off-days, we had a driver take us there so we could explore the site. The entry fee of roughly $2 meant that mainly tourists and well-off locals were inside. I was with a co-worker who vaguely resembled Toby McGuire, but only to the extent that he was white and skinny and wore aviator sunglasses. However, to local Indian kids, that meant it was a match, and due to the popularity of Spiderman at the time he was accosted for photos pretty much all day. They assumed I was his security since I am tall and not as skinny and wore a "don't talk to me face" pretty much the whole time.
Here's an example of kids taking pictures with him:
Here's one of me, not sure why the kid is standing next to me. Note how sweaty and ill-prepared I look.
So, being young and dumb neither I nor my coworker thought to bring any water. Foolishly, we assumed that we could procure some or that it would be a quick trip. However, getting to the top of this fort turned out to take a couple of hours. Most frustrating, there were water fountains about every 10 minutes along the trails and serendipitous routes to the top. Of course, even one sip of that Indian tap water in our weak, American GI systems would have put both of us in the hospital with the kind of diarrhea that can kill you. So we knew better than to try it. We liked living dangerously but didn't want to die from diarrhea. There were also guys selling bottled water, but we could see they were refilling those bottles from a water fountain behind their booth so luckily we didn't fall for that trick.
Needless to say, we got REALLY thirsty. About as thirsty as I can ever remember being. In total, we were probably at the site for 4 or 5 hours or so, but considering it was high desert, dry, hot, and we were actively hiking it was borderline dangerous dehydration. Fortunately, our driver was happily waiting for us when we finished our tour. We exclaimed "water, please!", and he proudly popped the trunk revealing an icy cooler (well, no ice actually, but it was a cooler) full of warm bottles of this:
Yep, when you are literally dying of thirst, Pulpy Orange to the rescue. I would describe it as orange soda, with pulp. Or maybe tang, with pulp. But there was A LOT of pulp. But we were thirsty AF and it had to do. It was awful, but it was wonderful. And I hope I never have to drink it again.
But seriously, check out Hyderabad if you get the chance it was a very cool city.