Hullo everyone. Bruce has asked me to let you all know that he is sorry about not communicating but is not able to get on to computer at the moment. He is in a clinic receiving treatment for the Indian strain of accute Montezuma’s Revenge. There is no prognosis as yet re time to dong the disease. His cell phone is working but please only use Text Messages if you wish to contact him. Phone number is 07909504328. At the moment he is well p’d off with himself & the situation in general. Cheers, Jack Ryan

It’s in Mumbai and it’s an air-conditioned cybercafe with fast PCs running XP, flat screens, reasonable keyboards and accessible USB ports and CD-RW drives. They even have a scanner, which will be very useful for me just now.

Downstairs, they have a clean sit-down toilet with a handbasin and soap. It doesn’t have one of those nasty taps at mid-shin level which is for filling a bucket to manually flush away the goodies and which always leaks, soaking my trouser leg. (This has happened 3 times today to me at toilets in Mumbai station.)

Thank goodness for LJ. I can vent my spleen and sphyncter into it and no-one need get hurt. The alternative might be a Bruce ready to inflict physical violence. So what’s been happening?

Most of Saturday 29th was spent on trying to sort out my Sumatra visit. I had thought that my Sumatran friend’s family live near Medan. They don’t – they live a couple of days by bus south, in Padang and Pekanbaru. So I tried to find direct flights from Singapore to Pekanbaru (this is maybe 100 miles!), where the relatives who speak english live. No joy:

• Merpati’s website was down. (My guidebook did say ‘it’s Merparti and I’ll fly if I want to’.)
• Singapore airlines would have to cancel my current bookings and give me new ones to Singapore – overall this would cost me an extra 200 pounds and still not get me to Pekanbaru.
• Garuda’s website only mentiones flights from Singapore to Padang via Jakarta. Their call-centre wasn’t answering.
• Silkair doesn’t touch Pekanbaru.
• Other Indonesian airlines either have websites in bahasa indonesia or don’t have websites at all.

So I’m going to get to SIngapore and then bugger around getting a flight to Pekanbaru, then phone my friend so she can tell her rellies when I’ll arrive. The fall-back is to get a boat to an Indonesian island and then another boat up the Batang Hari river to Pekanbaru. This has some appeal but getting me and my grot to a freindly place appeals more.

After blogging and getting as much of my adminstrivia as possible done, I called John, Suriya’s friend who has a cellphone. His english, combined with the vagaries of cellphones, meant that I could only make out something about Suriya having been in hospital (or maybe still being there) and that I should visit tomorrow. I pondered this over a couple of masala dosas at the Kamat hotel and decided ‘sod it. Even if Suriya isn’t about, her daughters and neighbours will tell me what’s been going on and if I need to go elsewhere to visit her. So I’m going now!’

The bus to Colva was fun – usual overcrowding ameliorated by rock and roll in Konkani. I asked if the music was on CD and was told that it was from a casette. I then asked the conductor if he’d sell me the cassette. So now I have some konkani rock and roll/party music and am quite pleased.

There was a light at Suriya’s house and she came out to greet me as I approached. It turns out she’d been in hospital the previous night but was now home, feeling OK. Suriya gave me some sweeties that Gautami, her grand-daughter, had insisted were kept for me from Gautami’s birthday. I had sent a card but it hadn’t arrived so I’m very choked with emotion that Gautami wanted to give me something. Suriya, Priya and I chatted for an hour or so and arranged to meet up with Bobby (her oldest daughter) and Bobby’s family the next day, after her church service.

I took an auto back to Margao. Margao autos have passenger doors which prevented most of the soaking I’d have got if I’d been riding a Keralan auto. I think I was in bed and asleep by 10pm.

BTW, there’s a call for an L&L out in Madhya Pradesh. A new syllabus has been implemented in the school year that began 4 months ago. However no-one has yet brought out any suitable text books. Over to you, guys – or should I return to India and do it myself?

Sunday 30th
I first woke up about 2 am with Mughals’ revenge churning my stomach and cricket blaring out of the TV. Tossing, turning and other, less savoury, activities kept me occupied for a couple of hours. I fell asleep eventually, being roused just before the alarm I’d set yelled at me. Although I’d arranged to meet Suriya at 11.30, it took me until then to get into a state where I felt like moving from my room.

At Suriya’s house, nothing was moving, not even the foot-long grass now providing ideal cover for the wild pigs that like to meander in and munch her mangoes. I asked at her neighbour/landladies house – Suriya and Priya had gone to the room she’s arranged for Bobby and family to stay in while Ravi’s looking for a better job. (He’s a trained horticulturalist but currently working as a waiter in a local hotel. He works from 7am to 11am, then from 6pm to midnight or later. He has two days off each month. GRRRR!)

I didn’t quite succeed in creeping up on Dhanush, Bobby and Ravi’s 4-year-old son. He saw me at the last moment so I grabbed him and carried him to the house. He’s still as delightfully hyperactive and mad as I remembered. (I realise that this is a strain on Bobby and the others but I’m sure he’ll settle down soon enough.) I was even more pleased that this room had a flushable sit-down toilet.

Bobby had cooked brinjal curry, rice and rassam. I changed into my smart shirt and dhoti so I could make like a south indian gentleman (did I say I’m missing south India by any chance?) and ate one portion with Suriya and the children. When Ravi returned from work, I was encoiuraged to eat some more with him and bobby. My tongue said yes and I just over-ruled my stomach. The one difference between this meal and a typical tamil meal was that Suriya likes white rice, not ‘red’ rice. (It’s rusty brown when uncooked and cooks to white with flecks of red. The grains are much larger than other rices I’ve eaten.)

I went with Suriya to set up an email account for Priya. This was when I discovered that at least one of my CDs of photos is, er, problematic and the backup of this CD is, er, non-functional. I’m slightly sad that I couldn’t show Suriya some photos then (I’ll print as many as I can and post them to her) and annoyed that I may have lost some photos altogether.

Oh yes! My triumph – I got Margaret Mary (Raju’s wife) to smile! She doesn’t speak english at all and seems not to have much to say to even in Tamil.

Some playing with the kids and rain-dodging later, Ravi went to work and the rest of us made our way to where Rajesh’s family live: I’d been invited for a farewell-to-Goa meal by Rajesh. (This Rajesh is a friend of Suriya’s from Karnataka who came with us to Raju’s wedding back in early May.) I had thought India couldn’t shock me any more but I was wrong. Get this: Rajesh’s family have moved here to Goa because they can live better than they did in Karnataka. ‘Better’ for them means Rajesh’s father the family’s accommodation is a brick and roofing sheet lean-to on the side of Rajesh’s father’s employer’s house. This lean-to is maybe 3 metres wide by 8 metres long and houses all of these people.

Mariam, Tayappa Chandrasekar, Rajesh Chandrasekar, Somia, Tayamma, Malaman Deepa

What the hell can Karnatka be like? You may quibble about the size of the family but all the same…! I don’t understand: in their place I’d be consumed with anger at living in shit like this while visitors conspicuously spray cash around on beer and other substances. I don’t think I could have a friendly greeting for a tourist, especially a foreign tourist, if I wasn’t forced to glue on on by working in a tourist industry. Yet I was invited in and given a lovely dinner because of a tenous connection to one of the family who wasn’t even there. What’s going on? Why aren’t (more) people in open revolt? To make my position clear, please understand that I don’t believe in violent revolution. It hurts people and rarely, if ever, achieves its objectives. (‘Each revolution sews the seeds of its own downfall.’) But I can sure understand why many others do believe in it.

Dinner was cooked on an open, twig fire in an awning of roofing sheets at the front of the lean-to. Mariam used a tube to direct her breath onto the flames – much more efficient and less condusive to smoke inhalation than normal blowing. Dinner was tapioca chips (fried in front of me on a hotplate), chapattis, a bean curry and two types of chatni (both based on peanuts rather than coconut.) All delicious, apart from the red-chilli chatney which was even hotter than Jaya’s red-chilli pickle and defeated me. All lovely apart from Rajesh not being there – he’d had to go to work before we could get there.

I said goodbye to Bobby, Dhanush and Goutami and walked with Suriya and Priya to their house. After a brief chat and another visit to her facilities, it was time for me to go. I walked along the path, waving and nearly crying. I don’t like to think that it could easily be three years before we meet again.

The night was again interspersed with mughal’s revenge. What did I ever do to him? I’m so glad I hadn’t gone for a cheap hotel!

Monday 31st
Waking up with continuing stomach issues persuaded me to take the last two pepto-bismols a cybercafe owner in Pune had given me. They seemed to help and I was moving by 11am. My first call was to the hotel’s cybercafe where Mrs Khan had offered to make me a bag for posting stuff home. She said that it would be ready shortly so I filled up the time by buying a couple of notebooks and some stuff from a nearby pharmacy.

The pharmacy has a good system. You tell an assistant what you want and it’s pile up in front of you, then entered into a computer. The assistant then prints a two-part invoice which you hand over to a cashier in a locked box well away from the goodies. The cashier takes your payment, stamps the invoices and hands them back to you. You then go to another counter where your goodies are checked agaisnt the computer and the invoice, then bagged up by a third worker. You finally recieve a nice package with one copy of the invoice attached to the outside.

Back at the hotel, Mrs Khan’s contacts had made a lovely drawstring bag and we packed the stuff into it, then I set off to the post-office to get posting prices. Resistered airmail seemed the best value but I wanted to get another cover and to add in a few more things so didn’t post it there and then. MISTAKE!!! See later for why.

I had a fun time trying to sort out the photo CD non-back-up issue and then finally left the hotel for the station. There, I met with Suriya for the final time – she wanted to reclaim an umbrella she had lent me and to give me a contact in Kolkata and food for the journey. Again, I’m overwhelmed.

The jorney was OK – I even got a lecture on the uses of venturi tubes in pneumatic-powered aeroplane gyrocompasses. I was on a ‘sleeper’ car. I think I’ve described these before in detail but just in case, they are divided into little alcoves. On the side of each alcove are three padded bunks, perpendicular to the direction of travel. The middle one folds down to be the back of the seat. (The seat base doubles as the lower bunk.) Across the aisle at the foot of each set of bunks are two seats whose backs fold down to form another lower bunk. Above them, at the level of the top bunks in the alcoves is a final bunk. The occupants are kept cool by three noisy but servicable fans in the alcove ceiling.

The difference between sleeper carriages and ACIII carriages is that ACIII carriages have fixed doors and glass windows to keep the heat out and the aircon in. ACII carriages only have two layers of bunk and so much more headroom.

‘Chair car’ carriages have one level of padded seat and second-class carriages have one level of wooden slatted seat. Unreserved have one level of wooden slatted seat and luggage racks, all heavily occupied as previously described. So now you know. I recommend sleeper if you want comfort and unreserved if you want fun!

Anyway, I slept for most of the journey, blessing the person who’d chosen to make one of my carriage’s toilets a sit-down one.

Tuesday 1st August
I arrived here around 6am and immediately had to run to the toilets in the waiting room. Aarrgghh! They’re filthy and my trouser leg got soaked. The cisterns are all bust and the seats removed. You either have to hover or squat on little footrest built into the seats.

I dumped my major bag into the luggage deposit and went to the post-office (blessedly near the station). A wonderful packer from UP made an extra cover for my parcel but left the top open. He warned me that speedpost might be a better choice – it would cost about half as much again (compared to registered airmail) to post but I would get no hassle in the process. I wish I’d followed his advice. Here’s what happened!

1. The post office opened at 9am. Mr packer had been working since 8am.
2. The parcels office opened at 10am. This meant I could go into the parcels office (which had been locked, with a wax seal on the lock until 9.55) and sit, watching the workers straggle in and start yelling at each other.
3. I was given a photocopied form to fill in in triplicate. When I’d completed half of the first copy I was given some carbon paper.
4. I was then told to sit in various places until 11am when the customs people turned up. They had to check the parcel before it was closed.
5. They had just started dealing with me when a bloke came into that office to mop the floor. Everything stopped again for 20 minutes while he used a mop (which badly needed to be shoved up the office-manager’s arse and then replaced) to dampen the floor and move the grot about.
6. The customs people then insist on opening every sub-parcel within the packed parcel, thus destroying the arrangement of cloth sub-parcels protecting the fragile ones and buggering all the labels I’d made saying who was to receive each sub-parcel.
7. I told them that this has never happened before* and they kept saying ‘no problem’, utterly deaf to my response that
   while they might have no problems with me or my parcel, I have a lot of problems with their tardiness, inefficiency and the fact that I’m always before been able to hand over a sealed parcel to the post office and just get it sent.*
8. The parcel was sewn together again, nowhere near as neatly as it had been, once I’d re-sealed and re-labeled all the sub-parcels.
9. Other workers then sealed the parcel with hot wax. I don’t like to think what that did to the contents.
10. At the payment counter, I handed over the parcel, the forms, the requisite cash and got a receipt. This whole bloody charade has took 2 hours from finding Mr packer and should have taken 10 minutes! My guts were in uproar and I had to run again to the station toilet.

* Whether using registered airmail or speedpost (which could have been dealt with at the main counters at 9am but would have cost over Rs1000 more) from India before now (at Pune, Maharashtra, Margao, Ottapalam and other places), I’ve never been through this charade. Can’t they buy a fucking X-ray machine and a sniffer dog?

At the station toilet, I put my rupee on the counter next to the bloke who I thought was the attndant and waited for a cubicle. It turned out the bloke wasn’t the attendant but simply another punter who was ahead of me in the queue for the cubicle. The real attendant returned, scooped up my rupee and then tried to make me pay again. I told him he’d just picked up my payment and that I wasn’t paying twice for a filthy toilet and certainly not paying Rs2 when the sign on door said Rs1 per visit. The cubicle had a squat toilet and another tap at shin-level that quirted onto my trouser-leg.

When I came out, the attendant again tried to ask for money. I was in no mood for this and walked past him, ignoring him.

I’m now in a nice cybercafe, venting my spleen and occasionally my guts. I think I’m getting better but I’m going to take immodium tomorrow if it doesn’t clear up. BTW, the cybercafe is Jenisys Computers and is at Jiji House, Ground Floor, 17 Raveline Street, FOrt, Mumbai-4000 001 (tel/fax 2207 5213, email jenisys @ hathway.com)

I think that’s all for now. Gonna log out and ask if I can just sit here until I need to go to the station. See you later space-cats!

If you’re not Elly, don’t look behind the cut.

Pirates of the blistering bindhi bhaji? Splice my poppadom, Mr Tanner!

Briefest of highlights
* Visited and said good-bye to Suriay and family in Colva
* Plagued by bowel problems for 48 hours.
* Now aware of guts but not afraid of them.
* nice person has made a cool bag for posting things home
* in a ruddy blush!

What’s next?
Train to Mumbai overnight tonight.
Train to Kolkata over tomorrow night
Flight to Singapore over next night
Run around Singapore airport to get a flight to Pekanbaru in SUmatra

25th August
Fly from Medan or Pekanbaru to SIngapore and thence to Kolkata

27th AUgust
Fly for Kolkata to Mumbai and thence to London

28th AUgust
depong and debrief

If you’re not Elly, don’t look behind the cut

	The style here is to wear your shirt outside your trousers. It almost hides the pouch!
	oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

Well yesterday wasn’t very successful: I intended to do quite a few things, then be asleep by early afternoon so that I could be refreshed for visiting Suriya today. It didn’t go as planned…

I bagged up a lot of stuff to post home. It now needed an outer wrapper and I couldn’t find a tailor to make one. However, I got talking to the lady who runs the cybercafe in the hotel, Mrs Khan, and she’s offered to make me one.

Although I love the rough romance of luggage racks and dossing, I realise there is a penalty doing too much of it. I’m not worried that I end up greasy and smelly (except that it might offend others) but it would not be conducive to me enjoying Indonesia because I’d be too tired. So after trying at two cybercafes (one’s server died) to book online, I got a motorbike to the station and booked the cheapest class of sleeper (not ACII or ACIII so I don’t know what to expect and am looking forward to finding out) for the trains to Mumbai and then on to Kolkata. I have a firm booking for the Mumbai trip and am waitlisted for the Mumbai-Kolkata leg. However I’m 5th on the waitlist so should get something. And if all else fails, I’ll upgrade. The total journey is 2733 km and my tickets have cost Rs 820. I should just shut up moaning because that’s 0.4 pence per kilometre!

The server death I mentioned above caused me to lose an hours keying of emails and other stuff. Grrrr!

I do recommend slow motorbike-rides in the evening cool here as a way to relax. The roads to the station aren’t too bad and there’s a fun flyover above the rail-tracks. On the way back, I was on what the driver called a taxi-bike. It had a rear handgrip that supported my back, a wide, flat saddle and felt as though I could be driven on it all day long. (Of course, driving myself would be another matter.)

Buying stamps and envelopes is fun here. Sticking stamps on is achieved by glopping on glue from a pot with the aid of sticks, straws or biro inserts. I found a stationer but it was closed until 3.30 (by which time the post-office would be closed). I’ve bought the envelopes and stamps I need and my next task is to post things.

My other major task was to try to change my tickets so I arrive in Pekanbaru, not Medan. I spoke to Singapore airlines and the operator there told me I should simply email my requirements to their central unit: I’d have a reply this morning. Er, no, so they’re going to get a shirty Bruce soon. I don’t mind if someone tells me ‘tough luck, this isn’t possible’ but I do mind if someone tells me ‘yes, we’ll do this’ and then doesn’t. GRRR

I also had a wee dose of Mughal’s revenge yesterday. It’s almost funny to get this now that I’m back in trouser-wearing, cutlery-using not-quite-India. I miss blokes wondering around in shirts and dhotis with their brollies tucked into their shirt collars. I miss most of the women wearing sarees or salwar khamise. Here many women wear midi skirts and blouses with leg-o-mutton sleeves and some wear jeans and tee-shirts. (I know it’s not my role to tell anyone else what to wear but I do enjoy the colours and fabrics of traditional Indian clothing.) I ate at the hotel’s restaurant: it’s relatively expensive and I miss so much Kerala’s routine chaya and parotta stalls. It’s a bit saddening that a single chapatti here costs more than four filling iddlies with chatni and sambar from a street vendor in Madurai. Goa’s officially in south India but the menu had no iddlies or dosas: maybe they’re too lower-class!

I think I got to sleep around 9pm last night and slept through until 9 this morning.

I’m now in the hotel’s cybercafe, venting my guts and chatting with Mrs Khan, her daughter and sister. Mrs Khan tells me she is also a social worker, mostly concerned with crimes against women. She starts the day here. Then her son and daughter take over and she goes on to her social work. This is them.

Treza Rubello, Samira, Ershad and Bibijan Khan (social worker)

Oh, while I was waiting for the stationer to open, I got a haircut. Blimey, I’m Boris Karloff!

If not Boris Karloff, maybe Lux Interior?

And finally the foot is doing well. Not so happy about sweat/insect rashes on my arms that appeared in Madurai but they’re responding well to neosporin, sunlight and sleep.

My foot has been re-trod.

Firstly, an apology to the people who weren’t amused by a meant-to-be-funny text message. Being, well, me inspires me to write such things. Being tired causes me to stuff up using the send-to-many feature and send them to people I hadn’t intended. I think you know who you are.

where’s the coarse sandpaper?
So I’m back in Margao, and despite a good hotel and clean sheets, I’m feeling pretty flat. I’m sure it’s mostly due to physical tiredness but there’s a contribution from going away from the Nedumkandam scene. It feels like the beginning of the end, even though I still have yet to go to Indonesia for three weeks, then return via Calcutta and Mumbai to the UK.

Also, despite missing all of you back home and a feeling that I’ve been doing this for long enough now* and want my own, familiar spaces and to not live out of a massively heavy rucsac, I’ve enjoyed myself a lot. I don’t want to go away from village India: the nice people (especially friends in Nedumkandam), the excellent food from wayside stalls, the intense insect noise, the linguistic challenges, freedom to do things that you can’t do in the UK, the mad weather and crazy traffic on impossible roads, all of it. I do want to come back, see more of India and visit again the friends I’ve made here.
*the alternative would have been to set up here full-time. But that’s not really what I want, nor is it possible without properly learning at least one Indian language and finding a job or other way of making money.

And yet there are duties and pleasures (often aspects of the same activity) calling me back. I think the people concerned know who they are too and I can foresee a busy few months as I try to see people all over the UK, put my travel pix onto the web and even seek gainful employment! OK, enough of this – how did I get here?

Wednesday 26th continued
After finishing DS’s essay and most of the other bits I intended to do before leaving Nedumkandam, I finally got to photograph while walking along the North stretch of the main drag. I met up with Ajeesh, Anish and another Malasadass perpetrator, Vinod, at Mini’s. A final black tea and a goodbye to Mini, Raji and Remia. I wonder how much the girls will have grown when we next meet? Vinod had brought me some jackfruit chips and banana chips he’d made for me. I can’t believe this – I’ve met him twice and he’d done a hugely nice thing for me.

Email had brought some good news concerning one of Ajeesh’s projects. I showed it to him and asked if the reply I’d drafted was OK. He liked it, so we quickly visited the architect/DTP cybercafe for me to send it on. It was also time to say goodbye to Mr Ozhathil and his sons and colleagues. One of them, Shaji, was away – his brother had just been killed in a road accident. Mr Ozhathil showed me that day’s copy of Malayam manorama newspaper. There was a report on yesterday’s event. I can’t read a word of it except that I recognise my name in there: I’ve been in a foreign newspaper, for doing something good and I’m very pleased about that.

After that, Ajeesh drove Anish and I to meet Sindhu. We had a quick cup of tea and play with her children. Her older son likes drawing caricatures and there were all sorts of hi-jinks involving a bamboo cane. Then we went on to visit Ambali, Ajeesh’s middle sister and her husband and daughter (Rajiv and Pavitra). They live about 1 km from a metalled road, along a track that is more reminiscent of a dried-up stream-bed. It sorely tested suspension on both the car and me. Ambali, Rajiv and Pavitra live in a two-room house in 2 acres of cardamom-producing land the family bought for them last year. The house is about 15 km from Nedumkandam, so I guess it’s a rare occasion when all of Gopalakrishna and Radhalakshmi’s children and grandchildren are together.

We then went on to say goodbye to Ajitha and Santosh and their children (Sandra [with whom I’m well smitten] and Kanan). Sandra and Kanan were fast asleep – by now it was 10pm. Again, I’ll carry images of them with me in my heart for a long time The way to their house is across a river: there’s a bridge made of three parallel and loosely connected bamboos. It’s great for testing and increasing your sobriety!

Back at Ajeesh’s house, I learned that Jaya and Gopalakrishna had cooked more goodies for me to take away. I don’t know how to express the lump in my throat. I’m very sad that I’ll miss Jaya’s wedding by only 4 days. I so hope she and Rajesh will be safe and happy.

Thursday 27th
My alarm went off at 3 am – as planned! I dragged clothes on and lurched my belongings onto my back, then goggled as Ajeesh went out into the cold, rainy weather to have a cold shower. Normally they seem not to affect him (well, they appear to clean him but you know what I mean) but after this one he was shivering. I said final goodbyes to Jaya, Gopalakrishna and Radhalakshmi and walked in the gentle drizzle down to the car. We drove to town and stopped at a printer to check on progress in printing Jaya’s wedding invitations. While we were there, two auto drivers came into the printers office and spoke with Ajeesh. He softly asked me ‘shall we go’ but when I got to the car, it turned out he had meant ‘let’s go NOW!’ Another auto had backed into his car door, dented it, then sped off so the driver could avoid Ajeesh’s wrath.

Ajeesh sped us in the direction of Udumbanchola, throwing the car around curves and driving with what felt like utter abandon – he wanted to catch this git at least. At Udumbanchola he asked people waiting at a bus stand if they’d seen an auto pass by. They hadn’t, so he thought it must have turned off the road before then. Somehow he tracked down the auto’s owners. If they don’t sort out their recalcitrant driver then they’ll have to face a very pissed-off Ajeesh. I’m sure he’d have settled for an apology and a token few rupees, at least to start with: this door has already been bashed by a jeep and I think the jeep’s driver has given him enough to pay for the repair. The new knock hardly increases the repair task, in my ignorant opinion. However, because the bugger buggered off, Ajeesh is very upset. I think this is the second time someone has deliberately damaged his car and then refused to make compensation.

We then drove on via Rajakkad to meet Rajesh and hand over some of the invitations. Apparently as ‘elder brother’ this had become my task. Two of Rajesh’s aunts got into the car: since we were going past Adimaly and they needed to go there too…

I think I slept for a lot of the rest of the journey. I don’t remember the aunts getting out. At Ernakulam I found that my train’s times had been altered: it would leave at 10.45, not 12.45. This meant I had 15 minutes to visit an ATM, get a ticket and get on the train – not even enough time to have a last chaya with Ajeesh. In fact it was after 10.45 by the time I got back from the ATM: thank goodness for late-running trains. I cried as my train pulled out of the station. I know I’ll be back but…

Of course, only unreserved, third-class tickets were available. This portended over 12 hours of hard wooden seats, heat and overcrowding. Actually, most of the journey wasn’t too bad, apart from whenever the train arrived at a station, lots of vendors getting onto the coach and hawking their coffee, etc, very loudly.

Also, as the train stopped at Trissur, I realised I needed a pen. I ran to a platform shop and bought one. As I was receiving my change, I heard the trains mournful siren and saw it starting to move so I jumped on via the nearest door. This was in an ACII (air-conditioned, 2 tier sleeper) coach but I thought I’d be able to walk along the train , back to steerage class. Wrong – they keep the scum locked away from the fragrant coaches! So I stood in the ACII doorway vestibule so that I could honestly say that I hadn’t used any of the ACII seats and got paranoid about my luggage. I had no problems resuming my proper station at the next station, much to my relief, and all I’d lost was some sweat and a chaya.

Even better: just as we left Kasargod I got a whole luggage-rack to myself! With my rucksack as a pillow and my jacket, jumper, bag of dirty clothes and lunghi as cushioning, it’s quite acceptable. (Getting in and out is a bit of a challenge.) Most other luggage-racks and seats were doubly-occupied and some people had laid newspaper or blankets on the carriage floor and were schnorkelling away. I passed the time buried in a newspaper, making up silly rhymes and trying to avoid the usual questions.

One bloke introduced a new question: what caste am I? I replied ‘none’ and asked him his caste. He said he’s muslim but that in his opinion there are only two castes: male and female. I giggled when I heard this: I’ll explain why some other time.

The train arrived at Margao at about 3am. All the ‘retiring rooms’ (station accommodation) were full and I didn’t fancy trying to get into town and obtain a hotel room – most hotel doors would have been locked hours ago. So, in common with about 100 others, I dossed on the concrete apron under the station’s exit awning. I’m very impressed with India travellers: so many have light baggage, including a blanket and maybe a sheet or lunghi. They’ll spread out the blanket, use their bags as pillows, wrap themselves in the sheet and sleep apparently undisturbed. I was very taken by the sight of the old bloke next to me – cocooned in his bright orange lunghi, he epitomised something for which I don’t have the words.

I got a few hours sleep and by 9am this morning was booked into the GTDC Margao Residency. It’s a posh-ish hotel at semi-budget rates and gave me the cleanest sheets yet, a much-enjoyed sit-down toilet and a proper, hot shower. I hadn’t realised how much I missed these until now. They felt utterly luxurious. I’ve done a lot of running around to get no-where very much today. I’ll bore you with that another time because I need to go back to the hotel and sleep.

Goodnight space-cats.

If you’re going to visit India and if you are going to visit only one temple, then it MUST the Meenakshi temple here in Madurai. Words can’t do it justice. Nor can my photos. Postcards just about do so.

Mr Balakrishnan, security guard at the State Bank of India ATM!

The west gopura

Detail of the north gopura

More details of north gopura

Elephant rock in the far distance

north gopura at night

BTW, I’m staying in room 408 of the Hotel International, 46/80 West Perumel Maistry Street, Madurai 625001 (phone 0452 5377464). Rs 200 per night for a non-a/c (i.e. with a fan) single room, clean squat toilet and shower and the cleanest bedsheet I’ve seen in a hotel in India. It seems almost a shame to sleep in it and get it dirty.

Groan of the day was caused my my camera battery charger falling out of a wall-socket and smashing on the floor. I’ve, er, invested Rs800 in another one and Rs50 in an extension cable so I can protect the Rs800 investment. Bah!

Just arrived in Madurai, in Tamil Nadu. I think I’m now back in real India. What a contrast between a cool, damp and friendly Keralan village and a hot, dry and bustling Tamil city.

As soon as I arrived at the bus station (there are 4 here), I was hassled by auto drivers. I tried to duck by dodging into a toilet, then getting some lunch. I wanted to avoid plastic-bottled drinks, so ordered a chai from a stall. It came in a plastic, throw-away cup. The best-laid plans?

Next stop was an ATM. (I had to borrow some money for my bus here.) It was being filled when I arrived. So I now have a nice pic of the armed guard, Mr Balakrishnan. He has a huge shot-gun but was very friendly. Gaaah, this Sify iWay PC’s locked down so I can’t post it here. I did discover a way around this but I can’t remember what it is!

The journey was fairly uneventful, apart from spotting a poster of that old hero/criminal/joker, Vladimir Ulyanov. I’ll bore you with more details later.

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!