Meet the Limca Book record holder for whom the oceans are a playing ground

livemint.com:

Lounge, the multi-faceted marathon swimmer opens up about the best and most challenging parts about swimming and his experience of swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar with his 21-year-old daughter, Kavya. What do you love most about swimming?

Swimming is a very innate skill for humans. We all were swimming as a foetus in our mother's womb and hence, are naturally good swimmers! Apart from being a non-impact sport with low risk of injury, it is also an excellent cardiovascular exercise.

Thanks to swimming, my physiological parameters have been in good shape for some time now. Plus, the joy of being in a weightless floating state in the water is indescribable. Marathon swimming happened to me as a natural progression due to my love for the sport.

I have always enjoyed my time in the water and wanted to swim longer. Swimming in open waters is like being in a totally different world and it offers me a huge adrenaline rush and unbridled joy. (That's why) I decided to take on the world of marathon swimming.

My daughter Kavya, 21, is a competitive swimmer who used to train under Nisha Millet. She took up open water swimming in the last few years, and I was very happy that I could do a tandem solo swim across the Gibraltar Strait last year with her. It’s an intercontinental swim between Europe and Africa and a beautiful one in the mystical Mediterranean waters with rich marine life.

We swam through the distance of about 16kms in 4hrs 28mins, and I think we were the first father-daughter duo to have completed a tandem solo in that Strait. To me, it has always been a case of juggling the priorities of work, family and passion. Honestly, it can be quite demanding as marathon swimming takes an enormous amount of time for