I had blisters on my feet but was skating anyway. Normally if I have so much as a hot spot it becomes the center of my universe and I can't tune it out without stopping. But this time my blisters were bearable. I had gotten them from walking, and besides I was in a far away land, whose visual delights kept me far away from the apprehension of any pain whatsoever.

The road was a fresh, a newly paved swath through the heart of Rajasthan, an huge arid province southwest of New Delhi, India. While rolling on in-lines through the desertified landscape, I was delighted by the paucity of vehicular traffic. That's not to say I had the whole road to myself. Quite the contrary. At any given moment I had to be prepared to share the road with virtually every animal under the sun, from cows to camels and parakeets to peacocks.

Weaving in and out of creatures great and small was a regular practice. Sometimes I deferred to a lizard who had decided to dash out for an hor d'oeuvre of sun dried grasshopper, or to goats and donkeys who more often than not just scattered to the side of the road and continued with their heads down, lips intent on grazing imaginary stubble.

I was more than a little nervous skating with the cows on the road, though, even if some of them did look kind of bony and slow. If they weren't already on the road they made darn sure they got there before you could zip by -- a corollary of Murphy's law. Immovable walls in the middle of the road, the bulls were instant roadblocks to transitory interlopers. Lazily, they'd raise their heads, stop chewing, and stand there menacingly -- as if to say "stop and pay toll before passing go, or else. . ."

Actually, cows and their cousins downright scared me. After all, earlier in the trip I'd already been chased away from a rice paddy by two water buffalo in Vietnam, and maliciously butted in the butt by an ornery bull in Jaiselmer, India (talk about a delayed reaction: hours after snapping his picture in dying light, I was nearly gored to death because he probably hadn't appreciated the long flash).

So you see, I wasn't going to take any chances in India by skating down a road in Rajasthan that giant bulls were defending as if it was their own. Because it was. I It's their birthright to block traffic. Cows are sacred and protected and what they do is law. If a cow decides to stand in rush hour traffic in the middle of Janpath road, one of the busiest streets in the world, so be it. If a cow doesn't come home if he's struck by a truck, you can bet that the cow's owner, nay the entire populace of the town, will track down that trucker and have his hide.

Speaking of hide, Indians would make great skaters because their feet are so tough. I bet even with the sloppiest-fitting leather boots they'd still be immune to blisters. My theory on why they'd never get hot spots hasn't anything to do with calloused soles caused by treading on bare feet. It has to do with the shoes worn in Rajasthan which are made out of camel leather.

Camels are the endurance athletes of the Indian subcontinent, land freighters that move with awkward grace as they clomp through an eternity of open space. With each passing season their bodies become more inured to the vicissitudes of the elements and a life of burden. Consequently, by the time a camel is ready to lie down for good, and provided she's been spared by the rapacious turkey vultures, her hide is very suitable for tanning and fabrication into durable yokes, harnesses, and pointed shoes.

It was this last-mentioned item, the shoes, that I found particularly eye-catching in Rajasthan. Some are dainty and made of felt embroidered with gold thread. Others are ornamented and bejeweled, with their tips curled up like the sides of a moustache. But most are built like battleships, crafted out of thick leather that'll last as long as the mortgage on a new house.

I was most intrigued by the latter type of shoe, a traditionally crafted, utilitarian type. Of natural color -- a camel yellow with a dusty patina -- they formed a sober contrast to the flamboyantly colored head wraps worn by all Rajasthani men. These shoes were my bane. I always had to stop at the shoemaker and look at his shoes, admiring the way the leather at the tip curled off the tip and looped back around to the tongue, or the way the soles were meticulously sewn on in many different layers with real camel gut.

The reason I run on about these shoes is that not only are they fit for mounting straight on some inline skate frames, but they also constitute base training of a different sort. Walking in these shoes toughen up your feet and eventually make them impervious to any blistering -- an ideal condition for skating.

I've always had this sick fantasy of scarring up my heels so the tissue gets tough and dead to the senses, enabling me to skate forever free of our perpetual foe friction. That fantasy has now been replaced by another, one of tromping fabled stretches of rock and sand on shoes made from the ships of the desert.

Sidebar:

Rx for Blisters

A blister is caused by unwanted friction between your foot and your skate. A blister can scream so loudly that it puts a serious damper on your enjoyment of a skate. How can such a small patch of irritated skin become such a big bummer for a workout?

Usually a blister is a sign that you're skate is too large. Because of slippage, a hot spot develops and water -- or sometimes blood -- pools behind the bothered epidermal layer as a stopgap protective measure.

The best remedy for blisters then is to get a skate that fits. My leather skates are form fitting and my cruising skates have memory foam and thus both fit like slippers. If this isn't an option, then the only way to go is to the drugstore.

I'm not talking about aspirin and ibuprofen but moleskin and second skin. If applied before a problem develops, moleskin forms an effective barrier to friction. Regular white athletic tape, if well applied to the heel and arch areas, also can be a smart preventative measure. Spenco makes a product called Secondskin, which is a gel-like substance that forms a thick protective cushion.

Dr. Scholl's bunion cushions are saviors too. Not only can they arrest the development of a nascent blister, but they can also temper the discomfort of skating with an already egregious one. These bunion, or callous or corn cushions as they're sometimes called, are adhesive doughnuts whose holes spare the distraught skin. When one or two are placed over a blister, they create a comfortable buffer between skate and skin, and you'll hardly even remember you had a headache in your foot to begin with.