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!

This time the GRRRR is at me. I’m very annoyed with myself for creating the need for the following:

I apologise

• first and foremost to the person with whom I had a non-productive LJ-exchange yesterday and for the upset this caused
• secondly to anyone who’s reading this blog and waded through this exchange.

I apologise to this person for the upset caused by me being stupid enough to walk into an un-necessary, hurtful and counter-productive argument when I should have known better and when I should have been nothing but grateful for some information this person supplied. After all, I had plenty of warning from many directions.

GRRRRR and GAAAAH again, still at me.

I was holding this entry back until I could add a photo of a map of Idukki’s panchayats. But this PC won’t accept my card reader, nor will it see the PC in this cybercafe that can accept the card reader, nor can I copy the image across on a floppy. Thwarp!

Tuesday 18th continued
On the way back up the hill, Ajeesh stopped to give a lift to a local panchayat member. There was a tense but blessedly non-shouted exchange between them. Ajeesh later told me that it was about a local boy who has a mental problem which needed treatment in Trivandrum (Kerala’s state capital, about 6 hour’s drive from here).

Ajeesh told me later that the talk was about getting the boy to Trivandrum. It’s supposedly the panchayat’s duty to organise this but this member was trying to offload the driving onto Ajeesh, without even offering payment for petrol. Ajeesh was very tired and had his hands full organising the schools event on the 25th. He did offer to contact his Red Cross colleagues at Trivandrum so that they could assist once the boy had got there. Just before we got to the house, we were passed by a jeep which turned out to be the boy’s journey starting off.

Incidentally, Ajeesh tells me that there are three levels of panchayat:

• gram panchayat, roughly equivalent to a suburban or village ward in the UK
• taluk panchayat, for a taluk (‘block’) of villages
• district panchayat, e.g. administering Idukki district.

The people elected to these different levels of panchayat are all called members, even when being polite. Here’s a wikipedia article I found about Keralan panchayats.

Above district panchayats are State governments, composed of MLAs (members of legislative assemblies). Above (and apparently often in conflict with) State governments is the ‘Centre’, i.e. the parliament (and hence the government, curently headed by Manhoman Singh of the Congress party) in New Delhi. (Parliament is composed of the Members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.)

Finally, above all of this is

1. the President, currently APJ Abdul Kalam. I hope he’s the only real person to have ever had a Blackadder 1 hairstyle but somehow I doubt it. He appears to be a strange mix: a strict vegetarian yet, during his civil career, responsible for part of India’s guided missles programme!
2. The Supreme Court, trying to keep it all legal!

Wednesday 19th
I’d spent quite a lot of dial-up time on Greenpeace’s website, identifying abstracts of research done by their labs which might be relevant to what I’m due to talk about on the 25th. However, the thought of downloading so many PDFs by dial-up scared the hairy wotsits out of me. I thought it might be better to go to Kattapana: theRs 27 and two hours on the bus would be amply made up for by the speed of their ISDN connectivity (and it’s Rs10 per hour cheaper than Nedumkandam’s dial-up anyway). Er, wrong! The local phone carrier and ISP (BSNL, the Indian government telecomms company) wasn’t playing in Kattappana today. I stayed until 5pm, hoping that the signal would come back but no such luck.

Instead I had a thoroughly enjoyable (even though otherwise unproductive) time, laughing and joking with the boys who run the cybercafe and their friends. I will post some digital evidence some time.

It also appears my ability to read Malayalam letters in improving slightly: I could tell that the first bus that passed me was bound for Kottayam (but didn’t know that it would pass through Kattappana on the way). Also I could read the sign across the mall from the cybercafe (Jeevan Homeo Clinic), the cybercafe’s own sign (Christ Internet Solutions) and a wall sticker for ‘Cyrix Systems and Solutions, KHB Shopping Complex, Kattappana’.

I admit that these are only transliterations and that going from spoken to written Malayalam is still nearly impossible for me – for example, there’s no difference I can hear between what are referred to as ‘da’, ‘ta’, ‘tha’ and ‘double-“tha”‘. However you may be interested to know the following transliterations:

• frogs = waalimaakri
• insects = cheevithu
• fireflies = minaminungu
• ettukali = spider
• poocha = cat!

On the bus back to Nedumkandam, I talked with a student whose parents are cardomom farmers. In the past 3 years, he tells me, prices for cardamom have fallen to a tenth of their former value (from Rs1000/kg to Rs100/kg). He told me that many people are turning to drink even though toddy, the cheapest alcohol available here, looks and tastes like fermented semen. I tried to ask if many people were tempted to grow other, potentially more profitable (but illegal) crops. Either he didn’t understand or didn’t want to say.

Back at Nedumkandam, there was a series of mix-ups as Ajeesh and I tried to meet up to go back to the house. However, it transpired that I may have made the first mistake by leaving Mini’s cafe, even though I phoned Ajeesh to tell him I was doing so. (She had a stormer of a headache, so I bought her some paracetamol and then left, thinking she would close the cafe.) Also, Ajeesh was suddenly called away to deal with another medical problem. He did try to phone me to tell me about this but apparently couldn’t get through.

We arrived back at the house after 10pm. Fortunately Jaya wasn’t awake or I’d have almost certainly received a ribbing for arriving much later than 9pm (as I’d told her earlier). I’m not bothered by being ribbed but I would have been bothered if she’d stayed awake to feed me or otherwise been inconvenienced.

Thursday 20th
Kattappana’s still diskonnekted so I’m slowly grunting though the greenpeace website at dial-up speed.