More drivel falls off my fingers while I wait for sneakernet to do it’s thing… I’m keying mostly verbatim what I noted in my diary last night. You are warned that there are pictures of my feet behind the cuts.

Thursday 20th continued
So I downloaded lots of useful PDFs from the Greenpeace website and then found this PC doesn’t have Acrobat reader! There was no way I wanted to sit through a 16MB download, even if the cybercafe was going to stay open long enough. So tomorrow I’ll transfer the PDFs somehow to the other PC which has a CD burner, then take the CD to somewhere which doesn’t charge as much for non-online PC usage.

I met up with Ajeesh back at Mini’s cafe. He drove me up the hill as far as he could go and then turned the car around. Tonight he’s taxying someone to Munnar (3 hours each way) and will be back in the wee smalls.

Mozzie Madness part 1
Mosquitos are bastards. Bites on my feet have been rubbed by my sandals (metiyadi in Malayalam) to leave small amounts of raw flesh. Sticking-plasters don’t help: especially on my right foot, the sandals tend to rub them off again and then there’s the pain of removing the remnants from the hairy parts of my feet. Ook! Ook! Ook!

This (i.e Thursday) morning, as I was putting some allopathic soothing cream onto the affected areas, Radhalakshmi offered me a traditional salve based on turmeric powder. Nothing ventured…, so I slopped the salve on as directed, then put on a pair of thick socks.

Maybe I should have expected the result: my right sock is stuck to my foot by a glue of sweat, germoline, turmeric and tissue-fluid. Taking it off is going to cause even more pain. Oh well, it’s funny, really. (BTW tamaasa is Malayalam for ‘joke’)

Mozzie Madness part 2: an update 2 minutes later
My sock is off with almost no pain. My feet are yellow-ochre from the turmeric, apart from a penny-sized bit on the upper surface of my right foot that where the skin is AWOL. By comparison with the left foot, my right foot could be ever so slightly swollen or I could be simply a hypochondriac.

I’m going to leave it to heal overnight, then slap on neosporin and a large sticking-plaster that should extend beyond my sandal’s frot-potential. Hey, I’m blessed – I have my own pair of fricatrices!

This is of no consequence whatsoever apart from being amusing, vaguely interesting and making walking while wearing my sandals very slightly uncomfortable. I’m more upset by the turmeric stains on my formerly white socks. My foot will heal but these stains are probably permanent.

So why go on about it?

• Partly to fill up time as I copy files from this PC to the CDRW-drive enabled PC by floppy disk. (The ethernet network is down.)
• Partly to acknowledge that mozzies are illegitimate insects that I wish had never evolved – and that’s without even considering malaria.

Still, it’s the first time that ‘roughing it’ has gone beyond a laugh, a learning experience or a trivial inconvenience.

Friday 21st
You already know what I’m doing today (except that today’s been sunny and dry enough to walk to town, photogrphing most of the route). Here’s some pictures to pass the time.

A map of Idukki district and its taluks. The big area of dark blue is Idukki reservoir. The small area of dark blue to the south-east is Periyar reservoir. Nedumkandam is in the extreme east of Udumbanchola taluk, on the road that goes north-south, near a place-name that’s in red. In light blue is Devikulam taluk. In yellow is Udumbanchola taluk. In pink is Thodupuzha taluk. In green is Pirmade taluk. To the south is Pattanamthitta district. To the south-west is Kottayam district. To the west is Ernakulam district. To the north is Trissur district. (All these districts are part of Kerala state.) To the north-east and east is Tamil Nadu state. Please comment if you want me to email a better version of this picture to you.

	Show me a man who is amused by loss of pedal extremities…
	… and I’ll show you a man who laughs at defeat.

Please note that the flash has made the yellow and red much more intense than they really are. In rality, my socks aren’t white any more. They’re a somewhat manky creamy, ever-so-slightly bluish gray. Again, please, please, please don’t worry about the graze. it’s trivial and it will heal. You are of course welcome to worry about the state of mind of a person who puts pictures of his manky feet on his blog!