As a child in a basket through a tropical country (2).

n the sizzling afternoon heat we entered a small town through a practically impenetrable tangle of people. I tacked around an oxcart, stepped aside for a rickshaw and then bumped almost into a cow. The people in front of me remained motionless, surprised, staring at Henny. "Baby, baby" I heard here and there, when they perceived Idhuna under the sunshade?
"Daddy, look a donkey" she called, and Henny, distracted for a moment, bumped into a hole, which are hidden dangerously under the dust in these roads, broken up by the traffic. Puncture! In a cordon of curious people we repaired it. Someone brought water from the tea house. We rushed inside after the repair for the umpteenth cup of tea trying to quench our unbearable thirst. Dosais, a kind of pancake, were served with potato-curry and sharp coco-sauce on a banana leaf, for Idhuna one with sugar. She pulled a long face - the international well-know sugar pot appeared and she got another spoonful on it!

Cool mountains.

Henny looked on the map. "Shall we stay here or push on a little" he asked. Through the window as far as I could see over the heads of those who looked curiously inside, I saw mountains rising up immediately behind the city luring with the certainty of coolness up there. "Climbing in this heat is not easy" I hesitated, but I felt my clothes sticking in this breeze free heat of the packed houses. "Let’s carry on". I said and ordered a second Dosai.
Outside we found the basket occupied: a little dark-eyed baby who looked at us innocently his daddy stood by and laughed. I picked up and hugged him, would our second daughter also look like him? Henny put our own block into the basket and soon we left the rice fields under us, overlooked the coconut palms and winded ourself higher up between lush tropical vegetation, which mercifully threw some shade on us. Now also more water came down from the mountains with which we cooled ourselves regularly and no tea house on our way remained devoid of our patronage.
As usual, the higher the worse the roads , but here it was to the extreme, they were improving the road. An army of women carried in small baskets earth, men loosened the stones and along the roads the real stone cutters were sitting; patiently they hammered the large chunks into small stones, gravel for the new road.

Adaptation.

It was heavy toiling, to my surprise I noticed that Hennny fell behind, in the past he alway had to wait for me. In the umpteenth tea house he went down: on a rope bed he dropped down exhausted. Did we then bite off more than we could chew. I made a calculation: "the basket weights 3 kg, Idhuna 20 kg, photo equipment, plus a few other things in the panniers, total over 30 kg. More than a few years ago. And I saw that these 20 kg never sat still, she waved to the front and to the back: "Daddy, look a monkey!" "Oh what a lovely doggy" (scabby creature), "there an oxcart!"
A few days later we went over the "ghats", as this mountain ridge is called, and which forms the east border of Kerala’s elongated coastal border. 2500 meters, without any problems we went over it, presumably we had now adjusted, physically to the new circumstances. The descent gave us laughing seizures : "you have been warned", mentioned a large notice board at the beginning of road which zigzagged down with 36 bends. The warning was justified!