The basket had not stalled. It flowed down the Aswa river without incident. It seems like fortune smiled down upon Karna that day. His basket narrowly missed every rock and tree trunk in the river. The river Aswa merged into the river Charmanwati, which some of you may know as the modern day Chambal river. When the Charmanwati merged with the Yamuna, and later the Yamuna with the Ganga, the basket continued on smoothly. Now it might seem remarkable that the basket did go unnoticed all this while. That's not because there weren't any people by the riverbank. On the contrary, there were far too many people. There were people washing clothes, there were industrial workers dumping toxic waste in the river, and there were people bathing in the same river, on their teerth yatras praying to the gods for a good thorough cleansing. Obviously, cleansing only of the soul.
All of these people had too many worries on their mind, and none of them bothered to check the basket. The only one who did was a woman. But because she was a recent mother too, who had secretly come to cast away her own baby, she didn't bother to take in Karna. This lady did get tempted by Karna's golden chest plate and earrings, but she couldn't get it off of the baby. Just as well, she thought as she saw both baskets floating away. It would be hard to explain to the pawnbroker where she had gotten the gold from. Especially seeing as the only pawnbroker in her town was her own father.