Here's a quick interview I did for HBTV at the Natural Products Expo held in Anaheim, California this past weekend. Among other things, we talked about a new disinfectant by Seventh Generation that is one of the biggest leaps forward in disinfectants, in my opinion, in 150 years. That's a pretty big deal.

The other lesson from Sayedpur didn't strike home until we visited a nearby similar urban slum called Jethury the next day.

In Sayedpur, skin and clothes were dirty and frayed. Flies fed on the mucus running down babies' noses, without the mothers brushing them away. Eyes looked vacant. Tempers flared. And the situation resolved.

Granted they had been waiting for hours in crowded, uncomfortable heat.

To me the name Calcutta had long carried with it the idea of incalculable poverty and destitution, of Mother Theresa's work with the poorest of the poor. It was the epicenter of need.

But there are at least four levels of poverty below that found in a typical Kolkata (Calcutta) slum. And when we boarded a plane from Kolkata to Bihar, we were headed into poverty deeper and broader than I had ever seen.

The alarm on my otherwise useless cell phone went off at 5:30 am. We were leaving early to meet and distribute vitamins to the children of Bhatpara, the most remote village we had visited yet.

India is crowded. Even rural areas have bustling street scenes, with people milling, shopping, selling all through the night. A woman makes chapati beside the road. A man with a few goats tied to a stick butchers one and sells the fresh meat. Youths gather around an oil drum to drink and gamble on Carom or Rummy.

I've ridden the wooden Cyclone roller-coaster at Cony Island just one time. One minute and fifty seconds in the apple-red car, etched in time.

The spine-jarringly rough ride and being thrown from side to side as the car lurched through its turns both stick in my memory. These set the coaster apart from its peers more than the climbs and plunges. And it was these that brought the Cyclone to mind hour after hour as we drove to Jaigoan through the night.

When I travel, I try to eat and enjoy what my host sets before me, even if it might otherwise make me squeamish. Of course, I'll make my food preferences known if asked or if appropriate. But when the host has gone to great trouble or expense as a gift to me, I make an effort to partake with genuine appreciation.

This has led to some interesting meals over the years. Once in Singapore I just couldn't surpress gagging while attemping to swallow down a bowl of a precious delicacy -- frog sperm soup. I'll spare you the details.

In the narrow strip of India that separates Nepal from Bangladesh lies a tiny rural village called Chenga. The village is surrounded by fields, each a patchwork mosaic of knee-high tea trees in various shades of green.

The fields are surrounded by malarial forests, where wild leopards and tigers roam free. Village, fields, and forests, stand against what looks like a painted backdrop of the lower Himalayas in this distance. A monkey glances up at the purple mountains, draped in wispy haze. A dozen monkeys lounge and scamper on stone walls that edge a few of the tea gardens.

Our time with Vitamin Angels continues into the village of Chenga, India. Here the tea trees are threatened at night by herds of elephants.

We arrived in India after enduring a 20+ hour flight, but the flight is nothing compared to life every day for the children we came to meet.