Ikh Nart Day 8: My Poor Feet

Woke up this morning with sore feet - not blisters, just sore. They look red and unhappy and I can hardly bear to walk. I'm in camp for the day; no boots, because we think it's something to do with spending too much time in damp sweaty boots and socks.

So I sat awhile with my feet in salty water, which felt a bit better, then tried some antibiotic cream, which was OK until I had to move around wearing sandals to keep them out in the air, then the sand stuck to the cream and it was really uncomfortable.

The others had gone out to pick up Roger's bat team and do small mammals, and when they got back Roger, who had heard about my feet, produced Gold Bond powder, which he uses in tropical batting places. Bliss - it took the heat out of my feet and a couple of hours later I could walk normally again (in sandals).

So I vegged around all morning, reading my Kindle and enjoying the sunshine - even with that chilly wind - and after lunch got some washing done and settled down to help Roger, Hannah and Nandia mending bat nets. The sunshine went away, though, and we had to move into the shelter. The rain came on, really heavy, and the wind got up, so we gave up and retreated to the ger until dinner time.

After dinner, Nandia gave us a talk about reptiles - we've seen lots of lizards around, and met the coluber in the dining ger, so it was interesting to hear more.

At the end of the evening, the  stove in our ger was lit - it was good to be warm, but the smoke-hole cover had to be pulled back from the stove-pipe. About 2am, the rain came on again and the cover was flapping around outside and rain was dripping in. So I arranged the buckets to catch drips, which helped a bit, but I couldn't see how to sort out the cover. A bit later, Bernie reorganised our kit so the trickles of water on the floor didn't wet anything important, and we slept some of the remainder of the night - it was a good thing they'd steadied it up the day before, or we could have been in a bit of a mess!