Naked And Afraid India Recap: Season 3, Episode 7

Ooh doggie, after a week of sharks, I’m glad to get back on dry land for some relative safety of a leech-filled jungle or a scorching savanna! No oceans for me for a while, not when there’s zombie sharks a-swimming! Tonight we’re going to be Naked And Afraid India, which is somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit. I think it’ll be impressive that with over a billion people in a single country, the show can find a range that can support human life that’s uninhabited. This will be a tough journey.

Phaedra Brothers
Age 27 from Utah
She’s a stay at home mom who grew up off the grid in communes and nudist colonies. Her survival skills are self-taught out of necessity rather than for recreational fun.

Hakim Isler
Age 36 from Fayetteville, NC
He’s the owner of a gym and Ninja Martial Arts center. Holy @#$%, a real ninja on Naked and Afraid! So awesome!

He calls himself “Black MacGyver” his lol-riffic catchphrase is “ninja-nuity.”

These two crazy kids will be hanging in the Himalayas. I guess I’ve always wrongly assumes that India is primarily warm, but if you get close to mountains, anywhere can get cold. (and India is gigantic!) Their camp is up, up, up and the higher they climb, the colder it’ll get.

Since they’ll be up in the foothills, nighttime temps can dip into in 50s.
Some of the fund things that they’ll find are:
Asiatic black bears
Carpet viper-#1 snakebite killer in world

Personal Survival Item.
Phaedra-brought an orange fire starter
Hakim brought a hatchet that he invented that looks like an amazing multi-tool. He really is black MacGyver!!!

It’s easy to be all smiles when you’re just getting started. Phaedra could be Miley Cyrus’ big sister.  Hopefully Big Miley can give Little Miley some lessons on being naked with class. They spend day 1 hiking into the foothills.

Day 2
I saw an interview with Phaedra and Hakim where she said she contacted food poisoning before arriving at the insertion point.

She is dehydrated and drinks untreated running water. Of course, since she’s already sick, she’s soon barfing and pooping everywhere. Not fun. And when you’re not wearing pants, sometimes you can be doing both at once.

Poor Phaedra barfs all night long.

At the beginning of their trek,
Phaedra is 5’9’ and 145lbs.
Hakim is 5’11” and 215 pounds.

They are both assigned PSRs, or Primitive Survival Ratings.
Hakim scores a 6.8 out of 10
Phaedra scores a 6.2 out of 10.

Day 3
Phaedra is down in the dumps, literally. Hakim digs a well that should filter out any of the terrible stuff in the water. Other participants have done this on Naked and Afraid, to great effect.

Hakim is confident that his shelter will keep them warm so he’s not making fire a priority.

Phaedra wants to concentrate on fire, she’s too weak to be cold and shivers all night long.

Day 4
Phaedra gets medical attention and is diagnosed with dysentery. They don’t need to remove her from the 21-day experience and say she’ll be better in 2 days. Hakim wants her to tap out. Phaedra won’t leave saying she will participate until she can no longer drag herself across the ground.

Phaedra is pissed that her partner suggested she taps out. I agree. You know that this experience is going to be tough going in so if you’re still mentally strong, give yourself time for your body to catch up with your mind.

Day 6
Hakim greets the day by swinging his ninja stick around which seems like a waste of energy. Why not go challenge some of the chunky monkeys to a fight and then use your stick?

I have to admit, Phaedra can make a fire like a champ.

Phaedra doesn’t feel that Hakim doesn’t care about her. Hakim thinks Phaedra is a princess and hasn’t done anything to help their team. Of course the hasn’t, she’s totally ill. Be glad you’re not the one who are the icky food at the hotel.

Hakim threatens to kick Phaedra out of the shelter. So Phaedra threatens to take her fire starter and tells Hakim to @#$% himself. It’s some petty crap, c’mon people, be adults.

Phaedra hints that there is something in her past that makes her a little combative towards men. In her Discovery bio, it is revealed that she fled her cult-like life because as a woman, her only purpose was to please men. Since leaving that lifestyle, she has found strength and worth in herself. And that night, she apologizes to Hakim.

Day 8
After their blow up, Hakim and Phaedra seem to work better together. Maybe she explained to Hakim what her story is; maybe now that she’s feeling better, she’s a more equal partner in their team. They decide to rebuild their shelter and add a fireplace. Their new shelter is amazing!! And they use my new favorite Naked and Afraid technique, bark striping for shelter insulation and waterproofing.

Later that day, the twosome goes crab hunting. Hakim is getting out ninja’d by a crab. Phaedra grabs it barehanded and they share it, yielding 20 calories each.

Day 12
After 12 day they’re surviving on worms; and are hungry and cold. They spend the next 3 days looking for food, which is a long time to fail at doing something. Are they watching those fat monkeys? What are they eating?

And the rain begins…

Day 15
After a break in the rain, Phaedra finds a dead bird, a red-billed blue magpie, floating in their stream. Now the moral dilemma begins. Do you eat it and potentially catch whatever gross disease killed it? Because birds are disgusting. Phaedra and Hakim are too hungry to care what killed it, so let’s hope it fell in some water and drowned minutes before they found it. I don’t think they’re taking any chances though, so magpie Carpaccio is out. They make sure their bird meat is well done. And the shots of them eating the leather-tough meat are grossly noisy.

Day 17
More rain is coming and with it, a cold front. Time to snuggle and tell ghost stories.

Day 18
Still trapped in their shelter, Phaedra mentions that she’s dehydrated. Maybe she could catch some of that falling water?

Day 19
They emerge from their shelter exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. Fat monkeys taunt them with their fatness.

Day 21
They are exhausted. And their challenges shifts from survival to getting the heck out of the Himalayas. And to do that, they have to hike back down the mountain. And just in time, Phaedra’s dysentery flares up again. After barfing for a while, she makes herself a bra from the bird wings. And barfs some more.

Their extraction hike is a 2000-foot descent over a five-mile hike to a road and a vehicle. I have to admit, Phaedra’s wing bra is amazing! As they walk, it’s unbelievable how much weight the have lost. They both look like walking skeletons.
Finally, they descend from the foothills and emerge on the rescue road. The first car that zips past, a white comfy-looking car doesn’t stop. But the second, is a chicken-laden truck with about one square inch of space in the truck’s bed.  Hakim and Phaedra have to balance their fannies in the back of the chicken truck, and they cling to the cages willed with feral chickens as if their lives depend on it (Because they do.) Couldn’t the production department find any other trucks? I don’t know how they have any energy to death grip the chicken cages as they drive to civilization; this would have definitely been the moment I would have died.

At the end of 21 days,
Phaedra lost 22 pounds and her PSR improved from 6.2 to 6.9
Hakim lost 36 pounds and his PSR increased from 6.8 to 7.4

After a few days of rest in India, Phaedra feels better. The thing she is most excited about is brushing her teeth.
Hakim is excited to shaves his hair off. Once home, he enjoys some of North Carolina’s tastiest BBQ.

In a Huffington Post interview, Phaedra and Hakim said they wouldn’t see each other again. While they enjoyed their time together, they have no plans to see each other again because that was a moment in time that they don’t need to revisit.

Like Naked And Afraid? Check out these recaps:
Season 3, Episode 1: Namibia, Episode 2: Andros Islands, Episode 3: Cambodia, Episode 4: Nicaragua, Episode 5: Argentina, Episode 6: Dominica, Episode 7: India, Episode 8: Nicaragua, Episode 9: Botswana
Season 2, Episode 1: Peru, Episode 2: Madagascar, Episode 3: Fiji, Episode 4: Belize, Episode 5: Malaysia, Episode 6: Bolivia
Polls, What survival Item Would you bring?, Who is your Favorite N&A Couple?
Other Fun Stuff: How to Apply & Casting Secrets

images © Discovery Networks.