JUL-B-5
THE
ACCLIMATIZATION DAY IN LEH,
AND PREP FOR
THE EXPEDITION AS EACH FIRST-TIME PARTICIPANT OF THE 27 NOVICES GETS ORIENTED
AND ILL FROM
JET LAG, ALTITUDE,
AND AN INSERTION INTO AN EXOTIC ENVIRONMENT
OF ALPINE
DESERT, NEW FOOD, AND OVERHEAD SUN
I made rounds last night on my
group of 27 first-timers in the highest mountains on earth. Most were ill, a good deal of that from
Jet-Lag, but a lot having to do with being light-headed and headachy from being
two miles above where they originated. I
had strictly enforced a go slow gradual introduction to the Leh arrival, and
most did go to bed immediately upon arrival, and most of those did get up to
come to the orientation sessions before dinner, but without a lot of appetite
for either the food or information. I
had told them that today would be the day in which we would wall around the
markets and take a few short hikes, perhaps up to the
I am going to go out into the Leh
town today and find an Internet Café from which I can relay these introductory
messages from the Ladakh-03 expedition, before I leave the laptop behind with
its even intermittent electrical recharge possibility at the Hotel Kangri. This will be filled in later upon my return
to Leh after the jeep trek into the
Not much seems to have changed in Leh. If I were not supposed to be setting an example, I would have tried to do a run today, but since I have been on their case about a slow start, I should not start the exertion earlier for me than for them. Besides, it has been difficult to remember 27 names and where each is from, so I spent some extra time just listening to them to remember the different groupings that I outlined yesterday in the “Dramatis Personae.” So, tomorrow, I will lead a few of these folk on a 10 K run, although there do not seem to be many of them who welcome the idea of much exertion, most saying that they are all in favor of sports, but seeming to prefer anything that does not require endurance. If ever we were going to compare and contrast the epidemic of sedentary obesity among burger chomping Americans and the smooth clean arteries of slender vegetarian mountaineering Asians, this would be the contrast in favor of the Ladakhis. No one here is looking to sue Mac Donald’s, unless it were for the violations of the rights of Mother Cow. I have not been here more than a full day, and I have already slid into a weary acceptance of the cuisine, which has never been my favorite, so I can count on the one time that a number of my young female medical students have bragged about on these trips—“Oh, if you go with Dr. Geelhoed, you will come back ten pounds lighter.”
I have organized four teams around the four individuals—one of them I—who have advanced beyond freshman year of medical school, and the other three have never done anything like this, so will need a floating overseer to even get started. We can work all that out in the first clinics, before we get to start the orientation process all over again, this time with a group that besides being unfamiliar with the clinical drill will also have to accommodate a heavy exertional output each day, climbing through a whole sequence of mountain passes well over 15,000 feet each along the Zanskar Range. As, I ended Jul-B-4—“Another Opening of Another Show!”