JUL-B-4

ARRIVAL IN ASIA, THE THIRD OF THE DAY’S CONTINENTS,

AND SET MY WATCH FORWARD TWELVE AND A HALF TIME ZONES,

AS I NOW CONTINUE ON TO LEI, LADAKH, DESTINATION TRAVEL

INTRODUCTION OF THE TEAM DRAMATIS PERSONNAE

July 19—20, 2002

I am now sliding down the final approach into Delhi, with my watch still recording the time in Washington now twelve and a half hours out of synch with my post-midnight arrival a full day later than take off with the extra half day coming off the clock from my jet speed flight eastward opposite the course of the sun. If anyone would like to explain to me the extra half hour of time lag, it is perhaps almost as arbitrary as the time clocks in Nepal, a n independent nation that did not want to be enthralled by its huge neighbor India so its clocks are set a further fifteen minutes back from GMT. The standard trick with a dial watch for those who lived in the UK near the Greenwich prime meridian and could turn the hands of the watch around so that they were looking at it upside down, when the long hand (minutes) would read the hours and the short hand (hours) would read the minutes—since the GMT is six and a half hours off the India Delhi time. This should be further confusing to Nepal since its other giant neighbor (it has the misfortune to be squeezed up high in the mountains between two of the largest nations on earth, and the two that make up over half of the globe’s population) is that ALL of the Peoples Republic of China functions on a single time zone, so that they people in the far Western states around the Gobi desert or Mongolia can jolly well get out of bed to go to work at 2:00 AM to suit Beijing’s convenience!

My internal clock will not have its convenience served any time soon, since I was consistently waking up at two in the middle of the night in Derwood (and tried to continue doing so for the two brief weeks I was in the occident, so as to make the time accommodation easier on my immanent return) and this made it easy for me to go running with Joe in the pre-dawn darkness and coolest part of the summer long days. We would typically be finished returning to Ken-Gar at the time the other MCRRC runners who had panned on getting a really “early “ start were arriving for a seven o’clock start, after we had finished at least twelve and on the special holiday morning “PtP Runs” 17 to 20 miles, since we would start before even the birds had begun to stir. We often saw close range wildlife, like the deer who would stand still and stare at us moving by. It is like their movement at dawn in deer season, but dawn is then fully two hours later.

I can prepare myself to walk into the Indira Gandhi International Airport and carrying my only personal effects in the small carry-on daypack, I will collect the over weight and over number medical packs for both medical camps (Ladakh and Lingshed), my only checked baggage. This will excite the Indian Customs service interest, and I will have to produce the bills of lading and the gift donation certificate with its fancy gold seals, all of which has so far worked to avoid the payment of import duties, but always takes an additional hour of going up the hierarchy of Customs inspectors, each of whom must examine my documents and give me a lecture that I am doing business in India and owe them a large tariff which they will surely collect next time. I have seen that there are many more agents in the Customs service of India than there are, for example, in Lufthansa’s personnel, or they would each begin to recognize me on my frequent “next times.”

The German national carrier adapts its 747 to India takeoff from FRA by stocking it with the cuisine I will be getting sick of before too very long here in the subcontinent, and also the more nauseating vapid romance movies made in Mumbai, movie capital of the world, churning out nearly endless long flicks of frenetic dancing in approach/avoidance flirtation by some over made up starlet and some brooding hunk who is always going to be in some kind of life-threatening big trouble before the movie is half over (around the two and a half hour point) when the love-conquers all will make it turn out to have a very happy ending in which all turns out well.

So, here comes yet another “expedition “ through the high dry and dusty subcontinent. It may be that I have done so many of these that the plot may get to be as cloyingly familiar as the predictable plots of the Mumbai produced blockbuster specials—and I learned by asking which trip that one of my GWU students was signed up for (son of the Vice President for Research at GWUMC, Fred Rickles) was on of the tow remaining trips I am booked to lead this year: Ladakh or Lingshed? No, Ravi had replied

“He is signed up for the Panamik trip in October.” Well, I do not know who will be leading that trip, since I have never agreed to yet another of these trips in a very busy time of my year, so if he is here along with the other two students who have so far signed up he would be traveling without me.

FINALLY MEET THE TEAM MEMBERS AS THEY GATHER AROUND ME

IN THE INDIRA GANDHI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,

AND WE TRANSFER TO THE DOMESTIC FLIGHT TERMINAL

There are eleven of them, now that each has found me, most by recognizing me from my photo on the web site. There are two more that I already know up in Lei whom we meet when we arrive there as we slide on down through the bumpy air of the predawn Jet Airways flight to Lei along the Karakorum Range. We pass right along the Stok Kangri I may plan to climb, and I can also point out the Gasherbruns I, II and III, with just a hint of the K-2 on the horizon. They are disappointed that they cannot take pictures of this stunning sight, sine these are all disputed lands along the highly militarized “LOC” = “Line of Control”, with over a million troops from India and Pakistan facing off along the disputed K and K (Jammu and Kashmir.) I am pleased to see the uniform excitement of the first timers all very enthusiastic about the adventure this trip represents.

I will introduce them individually with a brief bio at our dinner tonight, but have forbade them from doing any strenuous activity or any exertion at all on this first day of rest and accommodation of the high dry 11,000 feet of one of the world’s highest functioning airports. We will look out from the Hotel Kangri, (I from my “Honeymoon Suite” familiar to me) and see the namesake mountain peak—at 23,000 feet the highest point in Ladakh, and do a few regrouping chores. I have now got a total of five boxes of medicines, with eyeglasses (450 pairs, carried in by one of the nurses, along with a lot of clothes to distribute) and I will need to do some serious rehabilitation of my own in the stuff packed away to have been resurrected only a week later, but now being seen for the first time two months later—and in a condition I shudder to anticipate!

I will have to resurrect the two bags I never received on return from Nepal, when I had to fill the Action-Packer with my dripping wet stuff, now incubated for two months in Delhi’s tropical heat since it never rendezvoused with me for the last trip

THE DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF MILDEW

IS NOW IMPRESSED UPON ME IN THE TROPICAL

RAINY SEASON

I have done nothing today in Lei but try to clean out the stuff packed in my bags in a flurry of last minute activity in the Kathmandu airport after trekking twenty four hours in the rain, and being soaked through—the clothes were “road hard and put up wet.” The Action Packer was the first thing I had to unlock to get the visas and passports and tickets out for the whole gang who had given them to me for safekeeping as I checked them in the locked box at Kathmandu. I stripped off all the stuff I had carried down from Lukla, and piled it on a black plastic trash bag, and with no choice, put it still wet into the top part of the Action Packer and locked it. The stuff on top included two tee shirts, including the long sleeved white tee shirt from the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Chase I run each year in the Bethesda Chevy Chase YMCA with Joe. It was the first surprise—since eat was unrecognizable! It had dissolved into an of colors—white and black slimy algae with purple and green colors also—I peeled it off the top of the two most valuable things above the trash bag, my lavender rain jacket and the Bugle Boy photojournalist vest. Zippers, if they were still present and not turned to white crumbly powder, were welded in either the open or shut position, whichever state in which they had been left. The vest had lots of things in it, like boxes of film, and some other papers like Maps, all of which were a solution of gel. My special sunglasses now had the lenses dissolved out of them and the choky tie that held them on had turned ugly.

Once again, I went into the shower with the gear and scrubbed it to see if I could salvage any of it, spending most time on the lavender coat which had most of its lining crumbly away when it was dried on the roof of the Hotel Kangri, and the photojournalist vest which has no functioning zippers and all of the contents of the many pockets are now history.

DRAMATIS PERSONNAE

I have a group of 14 with mostly freshmen medical students and a variety of backgrounds and interests. I will list them in the order in which I had gathered them up along the way through the airports to Lei, and now as the “adanan” Moslem prayer call rings out as the final call of the day and I am fighting off the jet lag of the nadir of my day, I will list who is who:

Matthew Frances: Matt bmfbmf@earthlink.com is a Dartmouth freshman medical students whose parents were teachers who taught in Banbury outside London in the Cotswold’s, so he grew up in England. He is a big guy with a shaven head so he looks like Mister Clean. His parents and girlfriend now live in San Francisco so he had just come from there for a summer vacation visit. He was the first one to find me by the Web Page photos. He has always wanted to do something like this, and knows that he does not yet have any clinical skills, so he wanted to go along with someone who did.

Bella Panchmatia: bella.panchmatia@asu.edu is a nursing instructor at Arizona State University at Tempe Arizona, and is born of Indian father (Gujarati) and kept he r maiden name after she had met an American Peace Corps Volunteer named Dundridge in Swaziland. She has two girls, age six and five, and works in gerontology clinical nursing instruction. She came with many boxes of clothes and 450 pairs of glasses that her parents got by putting out an Internet request for this trip, although we have not optician. She is a runner and plans to go out with me tomorrow after I had mandated today as a day of rest.

Bina Sanghavi bsanghavi@sachnaff.com is Indian born of Gujarati parents in Mumbai, and is a lawyer in Chicago. She came to the US at age 18 to go to College at IIE, and had heard from an optometrist girlfriend about this trip, and signed up with Ravi. Since she uses Hindi, she may be helpful in translation. She has no medical background but many of her family are physicians.

Stephen Liu sliu002@umaryland.edu Steve is one of two University of MD medical school freshman, and is born of Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking parents who I believe live now around Pittsburgh. He went to Hopkins undergraduate and was born in Jacksonville, Florida. He was on my flight from Washington, but I did not meet him until Delhi. He sat next to me on the Jet Air flight into Lei with his nose pressed against the window like a little kid, not being able to get over that he was actually looking at the Himalayas as steep and arid as they were with the stark contrast of the green Indus-irrigated valley at Lei, one of the highest, and most militarized airports of the world. He is very enthusiastic, and cannot believe that he is here and starting his first clinical experience in this setting.

Allison McCoy amccoy@duke.com Ali is a Duke University freshman medical student, who is here because of the email sent out by another Duke freshman Jenny who was with me on the Dharamsala trip last spring. She has a father in Bethesda and a mother in Georgetown, and lives in North Carolina. This trip is a dream come true, and she cannot believe I have been doing this sort of thing for over 30 years and is a “wannabe”, but also cannot believe that everyone isn’t very tired already. She may be staying on to go with me on the Lingshed extinction of this trip and trekking along with the packstock carrying what medicines we will be down to by that time.

Hafez Haerian hhaerian@yahoo.com Hafez is an Iranian born in Tehran, Farsi-speaking and a medical school classmate of Stephen Liu. I deferred to him in describing some of the principles of Islam, but he declined saying he was not religious and did not know anything about this. He is eager to see about the clinical experiences forthcoming.

Olga Alex Lopatina lopatina1@msn.com Olga is interesting. She is born in Russia of Ukrainian parents and lived outside Moscow after Kiev. She left at age 19 to come to the US to study—what else—computer engineering at Pittsburgh, but found it boring after a short time in some software work. She joined a Medic team and found her way into contact with emergency medicine and is now a rising junior after her second year at MCV medical school in Richmond

Jake Bessie jakesxn@interchange.ubc.edu is a second year DENTAL student at University of British Columbia. He was born in Vancouver, and went to college in Victoria, and with his girlfriend with the same story of Vancouver—Victoria—UBC (following) went off to Thailand to go mountain climbing in the south of the country where he has barked his shin and has a cellulites which has given him a fever and local inflammation for which I just started him on antibiotics for not feeling at all well (?Weil’s Disease—Listeriosis?) He has no dental equipment, but I told him that with my limited dental kit, he might be pulling some teeth.

Fern van der Portan fernvanderportan@hotmail.com Fern and Jake have been an item for the last six years and have been hoping for this kind of experience for a while and will be going back to Thailand where they have stashed some of their gear to climb another mountain there. Fern graduated from UBC medical school last year and is now entering her second year of family practice residency—for which I sincerely blessed her, since I may have her supervising at least some part of the clinical stations that I would otherwise be covering myself. I have not yet asked her how she got such a great name from out of my past.

Terry (Ty) Fowler Ty_fowler@hotmail.com Ty was born in Dearborn and now a freshman medical student at Wayne State University had come from Detroit and met me in the Delhi airport having seen my backpack with the Himalayan High embroidery. He went to Bowling Green College and is keen on getting to see this part of the world where he has never been before—in common with all others on this trip, with my single exception.

Sammy Gorman sammyGorman@aol.com Sammy is the stepdaughter of Frederica von Strada, a well-known opera singer who has been hooked up with Virginia for information they are exchanging on the care of the voice that will be in Virginia’s thesis. She had been on this trip last year as a freshman osteopathy student in Terumo University, which I had never heard of, outside San Francisco. She had really liked the “very fast learning” she experienced then, and had also taken up with Jimmy, our driver, and Dr. Dawa (chief medical officer Lei District’s) son. So, as she had gone on with me to Panamik from this Ladakh trip last year, she had come back to India three more times, allegedly to see the cardiac surgical patients down to AIIMS in Delhi, but principally to hang out with Jimmy. She was her as I left from Chandigarh last month and I am allegedly supervising her clinical international experience for these several months, but she, also, only just now arrived in Lei today

Deborah Szymowksi bsnski@aol.com Deborah was also with me on last year’s Ladakh trip and had come back to join in on the Spiti trip just completed. She just graduated at University of Colorado with a nursing BSN and is going to be starting a job in the emergency room in Denver, a start up of work she has been delaying by these trips, with an interval dash to Bali to attend a wedding and hang out with her husband’s and her friends vacationing there. So, this is her third trip I have led within this year here in India.

NOW, I MUST ACKNOWLEDGE THE WORLD’S TIME ZONES

AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS AND THEIR INCOMPATABILITY

WITH MY GLOBE-GIRDLING SCHEDULE

I am fading fast, and will probably awaken at 2:00 AM to be running at 6:00 AM and then at my nadir at 2:00 PM when I am supposed to be giving a formal lecture to the Lei Ladakhi medical community and my own team. This will be just before the practice tournament for the highest altitude polo matches ever played here at 4:00 PM.

And now that the dogs that lie around all day sleeping have had their nightly prowling chorus at 3:00 AM and have awakened the muzzein to his first morning prayer call at 4:00 AM which has awakened the birds for their chorus at 5:00 AM, I will gather the four others who claim to be runners or walkers and take off on the first high altitude run of the trek in Lei, up around the Halal market, which should be busy slaughtering at dawn since this is the first day (Saturday) after their holy day (Friday) which is an off day for the hard work of slaughtering and butchering outside the city limits on the “Boot Hill” for the flock. I would type more to you, but after the electric power has been oln most of the night when people are presumably asleep (except for those who have just flown in from far away), now during the start of the peak period of power demand, the electricity has been turned off, so I have neither light to see in this darkness, or much residual laptop battery to go on, so I will retire---but not sleep, for the half hour before beginning the first run of the new Ladakh –02 trek expedition!

Return to July Index

Return to Journal Index