Wednesday, December 26

Yesterday I got very red in the early afternoon sun. Forty minutes did it. Today I woke up to a nicely cloudy morning.

Yesterday we had two cockroaches and an enormous bee-like insect in the house. This morning we have a prehistoric looking insect about three centimetres long on the balcony table, either asleep or dead. A stag beetle, or close relation? Who knows.

Irma will do some work at the balcony table with her laptop, and Naa and I will read. As a result we will have no breakfast followed by a generous lunch.

Irma and Naa will go to various local shops with Tangaraj, and when they return Irma will tell me to get dressed and leap in the rickshaw.

We will set off on an hour’s drive that takes us to numerous dead-ends.

Eventually we will get to Ganesh Holiday Home where we meet Murugan, the owner. Irma heard about this from the gay couple in Chile that she visited with Auo, after they met in the Himalayas, and had decided she wanted to see it.

We will get shown around the impressive building and sit for tea with Murugan. By the time we leave Irma will have booked an ayurvedic treatment with his son, the doctor.

Tangaraj will drive us back around the edge of Lake Vellayani, a wonderfully tranquil sweetwater lake we had never actually seen before.

In the evening I will start reading Bats Fly At Dusk, by Erle Stanley Gardner, writing as AA Fair.