We got up at quarter to six in the morning, but I was going nowhere. Christine explained to the tuk-tuk driver who had come to fetch us that I was ill and we couldn't go with him. For over a week now I have had a nagging pain in my left side, rather like Marvin and his diodes in the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. I've been trying to ignore it in panglossian fashion in the hope it would go away. It has generally subsided during the day, but increasingly woken me up at night, and been worst when I've just got up. This morning it was so painful that I knew Christine was right and I needed to see a doctor, I certainly couldn't sit on a kayak.
The manager of the A.J.Park hotel kindly drove us in his car to the doctor's surgery in a ramshackle old building where you had to remove your shoes to enter. The doctor was an old Indian gentleman with round glasses and a white beard who looked so experienced that just his appearance imbued one with confidence. He sent us to get an x-ray after a nurse had given me an injection of pain killer in the behind. The hotel manager translated everything for us and we couldn't have been more grateful for his help.
We walked down the road a few yards into another building where a nurse used an old fashioned x-ray machine to take an exposure of my chest. A few minutes later after the plate had been developed we walked back to the doctor and gave him the envelope containing the x-ray. The doctor held the film up to the light and studied it for a couple of minutes before pronouncing that he could see nothing physically wrong and that the pain was therefore muscular, probably caused by unaccustomed exercise.
He then wrote a ticket for some medication, which turned out to be muscle relaxant cream and big green pills to be taken morning and evening after meals which were presumably for the same purpose. The manager then drove us back to the hotel to start the course of treatment and after a while I started to feel better. The whole process had taken less than an hour, cost a few hundred rupees, and been so efficient that it made us wonder whether the NHS shouldn't send a fact finding mission to India.
We rested the remainder of the day, but felt confident enough to venture out in the evening. The hotel manager had offered to take us to Kochi tomorrow in the hotel car for IR2500 (GBP25) which seemed both reasonable and expedient.
We walked back to the seaside to visit the Chakara restaurant in the Raheem Residency which according to the Lonely Planet guide is Alleppey's premier eating place. Although it was a pretty place, both our fish dishes, if they had been cooked by a chef, certainly hadn't been tasted by one. Christine's was out of balance and mine contained the chewiest tuna I have ever been served.
Back by tuk-tuk, maybe the meal hadn't been a success but we were happy that the day had been as I was almost pain free for the first time in a week, and our travel plans were in place for tomorrow.
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