OCT-B-2

THE START OF A NEW ADVENTURE

IN A BRAND NEW EASTERN HIMALAYAN SITE:

SIKKIM

October 6, 2003

I have arrived in India, am transiting through Delhi to fly to Bagdogra, and am on my way by road into interior Sikkim

After a brief overnight in the Ajanta Hotel, and an early wakeup to make use of the Internet Café in the Ajanta, I have sent a note to announce my arrival in India—at least as far as the half way round the world—and heading toward my new “destination travel,” Sikkim. Even the doormen and porters at the Ajanta recognize me and welcome me back, showering me with unneeded and redundantly unwelcome services as related in the last of the Oct-A-8 concluding the Oct-A-series about getting here after flying out of a flurry of wood chips at Derwood..

But, now, I am here, and even sent an email to let you know so—two of perhaps eight that I had typed up actually got sent because of meltdowns in the machinery here following brownouts and power surges alternately in the Delhi electricity grid. But, Heh! At least there is electricity! It would be quibbling to point out that in my home base hotel I had a bucket bath since there was no water pressure in the shower, and the water was, at best, tepid, but Heh! I am here. I got a chance to say hello to Milly, by email, so she will know I am thinking of her as her birthday comes close although her birthday card may follow a few weeks later since it is being mailed from India this week.

ON BOARD INDIAN AIRWAYS DOMESTIC FLIGHTG TO BAGDOGRA

I have not been here before. No one has on an organized medical mission since this is the first. I have met only three other participants, Sarah Pawley, a sophomore MD/PhD student at Creighton University doing genetic studies on a mice model of the inner ear development; Candace Hunter, a black senior medical student from University of Tennessee, born in Abilene Texas and going to seek a Psychiatry residency; Linda Armstrong, Dartmouth medical school graduate an beginning pediatric resident in San Francisco. She reports that there was a group leaving after having been shunted out of the Nepal trip which had fallen through. I do not know anything about that, although I predicted it would come to no good since the situation there has remained unstable, but I will learn more about it in another hour when I arrive where I presume Hem, Ravi, and—I hope—my packed bag will be awaiting our arrival.

There are a number of birthdays coming up in the next two weeks as I am away, and I hope a few of the cards get back around the same month as the birthdays, but I was at home and never could get through by phone to Michael when I was not very far away. So, I will keep trying. There have been glitches with this laptop, which goes into a terminal spin trying to open some files that are only one line long, so I have had to stop along the way and delete these clinkers, one of which blanked out the screen when I tried to email from the Ajanta Hotel this morning. But, I am now launching into the relative unknown, with a road trip of the next five hours toward Kalim Pong, a rural area where we will begin the clinics with the med packs I have been schlepping in and out of Delhi, despite the foresight of having checked them through from Dulles. So, I have sponsored multiple porters for additional residual income, and the packs are still intact with me, so all is not bad, just inefficient. But, efficiency is never a very prominent feature of a first-time experience in any new undertaking, so we will learn our way through the entry into Sikkim and its provincial capital of (don’t you like the name?) Bagdogra!

GREEN, WET, AND DENSE VAIRED FOLIAGE:

THE TROPICAL RAINFOREST AND WATERFALLS

OF THIS REGION OF FORESTED FOOTHILLS

MAKES SIKKIM WARM AND INVITING HILL COUNTRY

What a change! We landed in the military airbase with Mig-23 takeoffs and landings, and reclaimed our luggage from the commercial flights they allow in to use this West Bengal airstrip, from which they can patrol the whole Chinese border, presumably equipped with the same aircraft. We gathered our things after I had mailed my cards and birthday greetings, and off we went into a succession of river crossings and the lush green foliage of a tropical rainforest explosion of species. In the steep hillsides of the forest preserve around the watersheds of the rivers are waterfalls, and signs admonishing us to protect wildlife in these rainforests. It is very different from the kinds of world viewing of the high dry Western Himalayas, as for the other being a high dry cold alpine desert. Here the altitude at Bagdogra is only 126 meters or 414 feet. I am much closer to Nepal and Bhutan—about a hundred miles—than I am to the Western Himalayas, which are 800 to 1000 miles from here. All the familiar passes such as Kardungla, Kunzumla, Chungla, Rohtang are showing up on the GPS as about 800 miles to the northwest at around 312* from our current position. Bagdogra is BAGD at 25* 49.49 N and 88* 25.57 E and for height it is 414 feet above sea level, hardly the world-class mountains of the Himalayas. Yet, it is my first view of steep hillsides with gushing waterfalls and the myriad of tropical species all running down to a river that looks like the Beas River at Manali, except that is two miles higher and surrounded by rocky dry mountains with some fir forests. Here the water is from rain, and it seems there has been a lot of it.

The river is called the Teesta, and it is on its way out to the Bay of Bengal. This whole area is administered from the Bengali capital of Kolcata—the new name of Calcutta. The area is populated with Bhutanese and Nepali, and they are a different kind of people in their appearance than the Tibetans I am used to dealing with in the Western Himalaya, but are also called Tibetan refugees, coming in under the benefit programs that come to refugee populations of the world popularity of the Tibetans.

ARRIVAL—YOU GUESSED IT—SANS BAGGAGE

AT KALIM PONG IN THE KANCHENCHUNGA RANGE.

There is always a good reason. This time it is that the medicines and my duffle bag could not come by road or rail so they shipped them by air to the administrative capital, Kolcata, where the authorities have confiscated them and are trying to impose a 25,000 Rupees fine for holding them there. They have opened everything and rifled through the bags taking much of the medicine. Who knows what is left in my bag of the sleeping bag and clothes and hiking boots I had secured in Leh to be stored in Simla to meet me here? For all of these good and sufficient reasons, the bag as promised has not been delivered, yet again. So, I will have to make do with whatever I was wearing at the time I got on the plane in Washington for the next weeks. You may have heard this, or a similar story, often before.

Kalim Pong is a “Hill Station” with a commanding view over the Kanchenchunga Range—when such a view can be seen, which is whenever the mountain is not making its own weather, the kind that has given rise to all those waterfalls we just drove past in rising up about 4,000 feet through the tropical rainforest. We have never been her before. Hem had made friends with a couple who run a place here that is called the Sood’s Garden Retreat, perched on the hillside along the road with a great view when it can be seen over the valley with Kanchenchunga itself behind it all. They have tended a garden in the terraces, and we have a nice place to have dinner, and even flush toilets (after the third try) and electricity—sometime. There are no towels and the hot water shower works—when the electricity does, to warm up a dribble—and that has not been happening; hot showers were too much to hope for. I am meeting the group of the previous trekkers who have been out and already held four days of clinic in the outlying areas of Sikkim. They are all senior medial students with two residents and even one unusual woman who is an Ob/Gyn, so I will not have to baby-sit freshman medical students. I will tell you all about them as I have just met them, when I can remember their names and something about them. For now, I am so drowsy, that not only do I not know how to spell, the semi-sentences I notice I had typed, have no sense to them, so I will come back it all in the too-early morning.

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