We were in the middle of a long travel day, by bus ride, when our guide suggested a ‘discovery’ stop at a dairy. It was raining so I wasn’t thrilled about walking around a dairy in the mud. Nonetheless, I went along with the group, not expecting to learn too much new about the dairy business. Our guide kept making a point that this dairy used ‘everything’. I wasn’t surprised to hear that as I expected that they needed to utilize everything to make ends meet for their business. He said they sold milk, made their own bio-fuels to provide their own power, sold cows, and so on. Again, nothing new. But then he got to the manure. I had just assumed that they sold the manure as fertilizer, but I was wrong. They collect the manure and do some processing of it which was not a huge surprise. You can see this in the first photo.

But the manure end product turned out to be ‘incense sticks’. Our guide and the dairy guide walked us through the whole process. They gather and do some curing of the manure. Then they add sweet basil leaves, sandalwood leaves, plus spices together in a ‘secret’ formula. Our guide said that one guy came up with the secret formula and it’s very valuable, sort of like the ‘Coca Cola’ formula. At any rate, they make the mix and shove it into little tiny plug holes and later push it out and let the sticks dry before selling it. You can see a couple of women working in the barn doing this in the second photo. You can also see the manure incense sticks on the trays. Our guide said the whole barn would be full of women working except for the fact that it was raining that day.

I was really quite impressed at that point. India has quite a malaria problem so they burn lots of incense to ward off the mosquitoes. I figured that was why it might make sense to have some sort of manure incense product. At that point, I thought the dairy tour had been worthwhile from a ‘discovery’ point of view. The ‘discovery’ had only just begun.

We got to the last shed complex and our guide started talking about the recycling of the cow’s urine. Once again, I thought it would be for fertilizer. Once again, I was wrong. We got to the last area and he pointed out the large kettle of cow’s urine being heated up over the fire. You can see this in the third photo. I thought that seemed kind of silly and I couldn’t figure out the how and why of what they would do with cow’s urine that would require it to be heated and cooked.

After cooking the cow’s urine, they ran it through some sort of condensing apparatus. I didn’t understand that either, but what the heck. You can see this in the next photo.

Next, we went inside the building. Inside, we were at the other end of the condensing, at the bottling stage. You can see this in the next photo. At that point, I was thinking that they must use the cow’s urine for house plant fertilizer which also seemed a bit silly to me.

Finally our guide told us that the cow’s urine was used to make a human vitamin supplement that was sold in liquid and tablet forms. He said it was for good health and to honor Mother Cow and Shiva or something like that. You can see these in the third photo. He said that it was considered a very healthy daily vitamin supplement. I turned to Vicky and said, “Trust me, if they ask for volunteers to try it, I’m not volunteering”. They didn’t ask for volunteers and also did not offer any to us. We thanked the dairy guide and got back on our bus. We drove off in the rain to keep on traveling.

Soon after we got back on the bus, our guide stood up laughing and asked us if we would like a piece of candy from the dairy. He had opened up several bags of hard candy that morning on the bus and since he was laughing, we all called his bluff and said sure, give us a piece. Vicky and I both took two pieces. It looked like candy. We popped a piece in our mouths. It looked like a Ricola cough drop. It didn’t taste bad but it was not very sweet. I identified the primary flavor as black pepper. We all were curious and asked our guide what was really in the candy. He was still laughing and said he would read the ingredients. He read black pepper, salt, sweet basil, three uncertain ingredients, and oops – “juice”. While we were at the dairy, he had referred to the cow’s urine as juice. So yes, we ate a cow urine vitamin supplement.

I want to cover and conclude this incident and put an end to it right now with complete finality:

1. I did not KNOWINGLY consume a cow urine vitamin supplement.

2. As soon as I was certain that the ‘candy’ contained cow urine, I threw the other piece away (as did Vicky).

3. Our tour guide duped us into consuming the cow urine vitamin supplement.

4. The worst part of this entire incident is that now I’m starting to sound like Barry Bonds.