JUL-B-12

RETURN FROM TANGSTE VIA CHUNGLA PASS TO LEH

AND PACKING UP WITH NEW JOINERS

TO HEAD OUT TO TSO MORARI

AFTER ANOTHER DAWN RUN OVER LEH

July 28—29, 2003

I struck our tent and wrapped up all my gear into a single bundle as a practice run for the duffel I will carry on the Lingshed Trek, as I left from the streamside encampment at Tangste. We rode out in the bus through the Chung-La Pass at 17,350 feet and 34* 02.44 N, 077* 55.59 E where my O2 Saturation was 78% and pulse 74. Already I am altitude adapting, since there was no tachycardia or shortness of breath, nor any headache and nausea as I wandered around taking pictures of the purple flowers that grow only at this altitude and the pyramid with the marks of the altitude and the commemoration of the third highest road pass on earth. Of course, I rode up to this point in a rugged old battered bus, and in another week I will be having to trek up to this height and hi9gher on foot carrying a backpack and water, but at least I have a jump on the later arrivals who are all less than half my age.

There are two things that make me aware of that age difference. One is the fact that these students are in a “chance of a lifetime” to be traveling over the Himalayas, through spectacular geology and historic notes I would try to give them, and they preferred to b e talking about who was sleeping with the drummer in the Boy Band and the One Hit Wonders who formed a group that only appeared in one movie. Almost all their references come from movie lines or the TV series I have not deigned to watch, like Friends—with whole episodes repeated verbatim, as thought they have never had an original thought in their lives not coming passively from a screen in front of them. Their recall for the trivia of pop culture is phenomenal, and their mastery of medical facts is near zero. Unfortunately for them, I am not called upon to score them for the former, and a few of them are total losses, with immaturity being acted out by clowning full time, especially when the pressure is on to make a decision or to identify from recall some fact just given to them earlier. If they are going to ask for my professional evaluation, they have a rather poor chance of enjoying the result. What do you thing my chances of sleeping through the first voyage for any one of them through the spectacular Indus River Canyon, which a couple did, then awakened to urgently request that we pull over another vehicle to trade the latest tape since they had the CD and wanted to cite the lines in the lyrics—while driving along the most major up thrust of orogeny on the planet.

Second is that they can babble about trivia, and will turn to me to ask questions that I would not even dream of thinking, let alone asking. One walked along the road for a short distance at Tangste and came upon some dung, and wanted to know if this was most likely a snow leopard. One asks me where the bathroom is. Do you know where you are? Would you like to consider using your own resources to make a facility of the kind you just now request? There is one student who is so far out in la-la land, that she is convinced that everything is solvable by a consensus of a committee that is enacted into legislation, and we should all agree to preventive medicine, then there would be no need for any of our medicines to try to manage acute illnesses or exacerbations of chronic ones. OK. She is the person who in class would raise her hand after the teacher would say, “If there are no more questions, the class may be dismissed early.” She would then follow by a series of ever more inane and obvious nutso comments.

By and large the students were getting the drill in Tangste with the exception of a few who simply withdrew to a spectator sport situation and I simply wrote them off after multiple tries to get them involved in both the clinical care and the tutorials. The youngest still had “blonde moments” in which their much longer identification as cheerleaders prevailed over the healer presumed future, but as long as the two were not mixed in patient care, I overlooked it.

ARRIVAL AT HOTEL KANGRI,

AND A BREIF FLURRY OF SHOPPING

I had promised Jim Campbell I would help him buy a rug. We went with Lee Dutton to my Kashmiri merchant after I had gone to him to prepare him to get out his best stuff and to sell the merchandise offered as though it were coming to me. I then went with him to the Sikh camera shop across the way, and turned in my again-broken Nikon 28—70 Zoom lens. They said they could not repair it and it would have to be shipped to Delhi to repair, which means that even if it is fixed it would not b e available for my Lingshed trek. But I would have no time in DC to bring it in to George Mora who has already fixed it four times, so I told them to go ahead and send it for repair of the aperture control screw that it has jumped again.

I went back with Jim and Lee to look over a large collection of ancient Tibetan artifacts, and both Jim and lee got an item of two for their wives. We then went to the carpet showroom, and after looking over some very nice new silk rugs, I looked at some ancient silk and wool rugs. One appealed to Jim and we got him a bargain, whereas there was a smaller wool rug made by a family that is now extinct, and the exquisite workmanship of the rug is depicting a Persian pattern of a hunting scene and is made by the Kashmir family that can never be brought back to make such a rug again. He is holding it for me, while I got the Kashmiri merchant to throw in an Angora scarf for Jim, and possibly me if I later decide to carry the carpet with me.

I met and talked with the four new women who will be joining us for the Tso Morari Trip in preparation of the Lingshed trek:

Missy, short for Melissa is a freshman med student at UVA but comes from Wellsboro PA and was surprised to hear that I knew all about her hometown, and even knew the Bairs and the Russ Manning family, with whose son—one year ahead of her—had played for Penn State and that I had gone to the Outback Bowl with the Manning family in Tampa with Donald joining us.

Yoko, short for Yokohiro, is from Alabama, and joined the Med/Peds program in Rochester University, at Strong Memorial and is a third year resident there.

Nicky, short for Nicole, is also a third year Med/Peds resident at Rochester and is married to an attorney there.

Lindsay is a first year med student in the quite different British system at Guy’s and Thomas’s Hospital in London, being born in Glasgow.

There will be an additional five joiners for the Lingshed group, and I will outline them now, with my GWU students coming still later:

Abe is a Midwesterner, born in Rapid City SD where he is a rising fourth year med student

Mora is a Duke undergrad graduate now a freshman med student at University of Arizona at Tucson.

Ajay is an undergraduate who is in a year off working in a genetics lab, as an Indian by genetics, but born in Danville Illinois, moving to Alexandria LA, and has been touring India for a month already.

ANOTHER MAGNIFICENT START TO THE NEXT CHAPTER

BEGINNING WITH A LONG RUN UP AND OVER TSEMO GOMPA

Lee and I left at 5:15 AM before the second prayer call from the muezzin in the minaret. We got above the Halal butchery when sheep are usually standing in wait for their fate, but no sheep nor butchers were there. Besides, there were continuous runs of chanting from the Buddhist enclave, and it appears that there is something special about this day that relates in some way to the Ladakh Festival.

We washed up from our run, stashed our supplies we would not be needing, and got into a series of eight Indian jeeps (Mahindras, Tatas and Polaras) and we set off up the Indus River Canyon. Just what we saw and did on the way to and at Tso Morari is the subject of the next chapter in Jul-B-13.

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