Panaji, a city located at the intersection of the Mandovi River and the Arabian Sea in Goa, India, accommodates a number of natural water bodies including ponds, lakes, creeks and backwaters. In Panaji, residents engage with the city’s waterbodies in various ways. Some participate in sea bathing and swimming activities and many travel by ferries to different parts of Goa where boats are the primary mode of transportation. This paper will explore how embodied understandings of these water bodies –particularly through aquatic engagements such as swimming– unsettle conventional understandings of urban mobility and reshape city life. In particular, the paper will explore the multiple ways (1) embodied engagements in urban water bodies reclaim the city, including through quotidian practices, recreation, and protest; and (2) embodied experiences of the turbidity, viscosity and volatility of urban waterways expand understandings of how the urban and ecological intersect. By focussing on (natural and human-made) urban water bodies and the activities that take place in them, this paper provides an insight into how these water-based embodied engagements transform the ways in which we understand water bodies, the new urban maps they create, and the forms of urban sociality and mobility they engender.