MAY-A-1
THE MAY-A-SERIES OF
“NEPAL-02”FROM KATHMANDU
TO LUKLA’S MEDICAL CAMP, TO THE EVEREST TREK ROUTE
AND ATTEMPT TO SUMMIT KALA PATTHAR
- Index to the May-A-series of “Nepal-02”
- The transition from “Dharam-02” closed out in Delhi on return
from Agra, to “Nepal-02” begun in Kathmandu enroute to Lukla on the Everest
Trek Route: Featuring, The All-day efforts spent in transit to get from where
I started to where I started! Eight security checks, Four aircraft boardings,
three deplanings and two takeoffs later, I am still where I had begun, until
I arrive late and alone in a besieged city, With a moribund tourism industry
begging for customers.
- Kathmandu and the Manaslu Hotel: Better late than never
for a start-up on both Dharam-02 and Nepal-02 parts of this ill-starred series
of itineraries: the first meeting with my new group and the tour of Kathmandu,
featuring two Buddhist temples, the “Female” (“monkey”) temple first on a
holiday holy day for worshippers, and the “Male” (“Badanath”) temple second,
followed by the “Golden Bull” Hindu temple and the funeral rituals of the
cremation on the funeral pyres at river side, before lunch, regrouping, repacking
and emailing at planned departure from the capital to the mountains .
- Early morning takeoff from Kathmandu, checking the Action
Packer at the Manaslu Hotel for our return; fly through clouds along the Roof
of the World to land on the newly paved steep Lukla landing strip, checking
into the Himalaya Tea House, and a tour of the expanded, but now deserted
and militarized village of Lukla to set up our clinic in the market place
and meet Gyaljen Sherpa and visit his refurbished PHC, while at a resting
pace at our new two mile altitude start-up.
- First clinic day in Lukla, with a variety of patients followed
by a postprandial hike toward Mount Tetra on the Mera Peak approach.
- Second clinic day in Lukla, with more and more interesting
cases, followed by a second hike toward the villages of Tuke’and Nachua, through
the cloud forest of rhododendrons and the old mossy snags of dead trees surmounted
with aerophagic plants, bromeliads and crowned with white orchids.
- The third day in Lukla clinic for 143 patients, and a surprise
reception after lunch by a woman named Donboche, from the village of Nachua,
a post-op visit from a very grateful snakebite victim, who shows us the post-treatment
result, and honors us with katis and coke and a ceremonial thank you for saving
her life and limb, then a hike to make house calls on elderly infirm patients,
and to be overwhelmed by local hospitality, in “death by chai ceremonies”
before returning for case presentations after dinner and a mini-mountaineering,
and tropical medicine course.
- Final clinic day # 4 is market day in Lukla, as we see the
five hundredth patient in clinic, before the straggler additional patients
are carried in to Himalaya Lodge, where we regroup, repack, and prep for our
Everest Trek takeoff in the morning.
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