Forgive the lack of photos - I'll have to use the power of the internet's imagination here...
After spending a nervous hour and a half waiting for our flight to Lukla at Kathmandu domestic airport - another EBC-bound couple at the airport got delayed a day - we boarded the hang-glider30-seater prop plane and took an exhilarating flight up to Lukla (2800m). Given that a plane crashed on a similar flight up to Lukla a few weeks ago, we were a little apprehensive about landing (which is probably like this - I can't view the video so fingers crossed it's relevant). We landed successfully and our pilots were congratulated with a round of applause. Our first day of the trek involved picking up a porter at Lukla, which our guide Chandra did for us (he makes everything a LOT less stressful), and taking the 8km downhill trek to Phakding (2600m-ish) past Sherpa villages, buddhist stupas and tibetan prayer flags (except we had more trees than in that photo). The menus at Nepali tea-houses includes momos (tibetan dumplings, mmm), daal bhat (rice, lentil curry and veg), fried spuds, chow mein and sometimes Nepali stabs at Western dishes like pizza or lasagne. Good, hearty, carbo-loading food. Mmm.
The next day (aka today) we ascended 800m to Namche Bazaar (3440m, 400m below the top of Aoraki/Mt. Cook), across a suspension bridge built by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay (says Chandra). Most of the day was flat, through a green river valley, until we hit a HUGE cliff hill up to Namche. Namche is like a ski resort in the Alps with a German bakery, internet cafes and endless clothes shops - the last taste of civilisation until we descend! Internet is NZ$13/hour, but I suppose they have to carry the internets up/down by hand as trucks can't get up here and the tubes are narrow...
Tomorrow we have an acclimitisation day before heading any higher. I don't feel any symptoms of altitude sickness yet (headaches, 'drunken walk', loss of appetite and gut problems) so fingers crossed this stays away. This might be the last post for a while as we head further into the remote reaches of the Himalayas, so namaste until then!
After finally leaving delightful relaxing Udaipur, we caught an overnight train to Agra - home of the Taj Mahal. Nothing can quite prepare you for the sight of this amazing building - it is a magnificent, imposing sight that needs to be seen once in your life. The inside of the mausoleum is rather disappointing given the beauty of the exterior, but it is a tomb not a palace! We spent a peaceful hour sitting under the shade of the main Taj dome, entertaining and being entertained by Indian tourists, and engaging in much mutual people-watching and photography/videography. The rest of Agra is pretty grim, not helped by the fact that the ticket office for the Taj Mahal is about 1km away from the actual Taj, through a gauntlet of rickshaw wallahs, touts, beggars and people trying (well, telling) you to buy stuff from their shop.
The 2-hour train to Delhi ended up taking 6-hours, made slightly worse by our less-than-ideal tickets in a 3-tier sleeper cabin with confusing seat numbers (I saw 3 signs claiming to be seat 67). Delhi, despite warnings from other travellers, turned out to be quite attractive and not anywhere near as chaotic we thought. Connaught place in central New Delhi was reminiscent of Sloane Square. Our final night began watching Ross Taylor hit a brisk 46 for Royal Challengers Bangalore, as we cheered each shot with Indians in a sports bar. Cricket, beer and mexican food - a great way to spend a last night in India!
I am currently in Thamel, the tourist area of Kathmandu in Nepal. As Nick has returned to Abu Dhabi, Ben and I are here preparing for our trek up to Everest base camp beginning tomorrow. We have secured the guiding services of Chandra, a 46-year old enthusiastic Nepali previously used and recommended to us by our friend Chi. The excitement is mounting for this epic trip, and we are looking forward to leaving bustling south Asian cities for the remoteness and cool mountain air of the Himalayas. I will endeavour to post again up the mountain, as I think that Namche Bazaar has internet cafes.
(In breaking news there are two Nepalis fighting outside the internet cafe. Why? Who knows...)
Apologies for the lack of photos. I am ready to smash my defective card reader.
Namaste
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Monkeys rule. You can watch them for hours.
Well, I finally succumbed to Delhi belly (in, er, Goa) after 36 days. After eating all manner of dodgy things in Orissa, it was the 'safe' tourist restaurants of Baga that got me in the end. Still, I'm pleased with lasting 36 days :)
Since I last blogged, I have been with Ben and Nick exploring Mumbai, Goa and now Rajasthan. Mumbai provided a nice transition between the Orissa and the adventures that lay ahead.
Mainly it consisted of eating excellent spring rolls and drinking beer in Leopold cafe (of Shantaram fame), wandering around Colaba (downtown), and, what was to become a common theme, being stopped to be photographed with locals. We took a ferry out to Elephanta Island to look at the cave temples, but finding
the monkeys to be far more entertaining. After an entertaining
overnight train down to Goa, we arrived in Arambol beach to find it
a tad, well, dead, and full of floaty-pants (one thing I am mystified
about though - why do all Western tourists here (bar us) deem it necessary to don those stupid hippy floaty-pants? Do they hand them out at Heathrow and JFK?). We taxied off to Baga, which Lonely Planet describes as 'Blackpool in a heatwave' - which I'm sure it is in peak season, but during the monsoon it proved fine, with well-developed tourist infrastructure, free-flowing beer and a laid-back atmosphere. My time here consisted of teaching myself to ride a manual 150cc motorbike and lying in bed sick, although the
other two made better use of the time.
Flying from Goa up to Jaipur (delayed) we are now in the state of Rajasthan, where we have been to Jaipur, Jodhpur and now Udaipur. We struggled to figure out why Jaipur is part of the 'tourist triangle' along with Delhi and Agra (Taj Mahal), as it seemed dirtier, noisier and more polluted than usual, and the palace wasn't as
exciting as the guidebook made it out to be. The Amber fort outside town was rather spectacular in its mountainous, Great-Wall-esque setting, including more entertaining simians. Jodhpur provided an
impressive fort overlooking the blue old city and more opportunities
to be photographed with locals (they love it - is it my 2-month
beard? do we look like cricketers?). The Rajasthan Muslim influence
is noticeable compared to Mumbai and Goa in the mosques, shisha
and Muslim architecture (like the Taj Mahal). Udaipur, where we
currently reside, is a delightful narrow-alleyed lake-side town
reminiscent of Europe. Ben just found a description of Udaipur as
being a cross between Venice and Baghdad (maybe this was written
in the 70s...?). We are spending a few days here recharging before
another overnight train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and Delhi, which is currently in the middle of a dengue outbreak (gulp...).
Peace out
James
PS. Captions are screwing up the page formatting and I don't have the patience to figure it out (after spending 2 hours uploading photos), so they are (from top-bottom): sign at Mumbai's main train station; Baga beach at sunset; me riding a motorbike at Baga; and the view from the Amber fort in Jaipur (note monkey in foreground).
No, not the awesome LCD soundsystem song. India throws up some challenges from time to time, and you just have to learn to deal with them - at India's pace, Inshallah.
Fishing boats at Puri beach at dawn
I have (hopefully) ironed out my visa situation and should be allowed back in to India after Nepal. I acquired (what I was told was) the right tourist visa, to be told at Mumbai airport on arrival that this was the wrong visa, and I would not be allowed back into India within 2 months of leaving. I was directed to a series of contradictory rules and regulations, but a visit to the ominous-sounding 'Foreigners Registration Office' has cleared that up, Inshallah. For now. I have managed to dodge the outbreak of swine flu in Orissa, only to learn that there is a dengue outbreak in Delhi, kidnappings in Bihar (where I almost ended up volunteering) and oil washing up on Goan beaches. Oh, and the New Zealand embassy emailed me warning against 'extreme danger' of terrorist attacks in Kashmir and Jammu and along the Pakistani border. Fortunately, the areas I'm going to are only at 'some danger' of terrorism. Phew. On the 'silver lining' front, I have learned that excessive monsoon rain has swelled the Sun Koshi river in Nepal - and I intend to raft this river in about 6 weeks, ha ha.
The local boys I played cricket with.
So anyway, my time at Kalinga Eye Hospital came to an end, and I had a few days to explore Orissa. I had an entertaining first Indian train ride to the beach town of Puri - where I was befriended by some young Indian men who talked to me about cricket for the whole ride (this is becoming a common theme). Puri isn't the nicest beach in the world, and apparently has a persistent paedophile problem if the signs in my hotel were to be believed, but a visit to the sea is a great way to refresh the salt water running through the veins of every New Zealander. I also played my first and second game of cricket with the locals. The first game I got roped into a Twenty20 game on the beach (and somehow played for both teams...). I had a good couple of knocks including a much-applauded straight six over the bowler's head - try setting a field to that! My second game was against some 17 year olds, who found my extra pace and bounce a bit tricky...
Monkey and baby
I also headed out to the Konark Sun Temple, which is covered in Kama Sutra-inspired carvings, although the highlight of Puri was undoubtably the excellent Chinese restaurant. After a few days I ventured to Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa. After 90 minutes trying to find the bus out to the Nandankanan Zoological Park (ask 5 people for 6 different sets of directions) I made it to the park, and was rewarded with seeing white tigers and some entertaining simians.
White tiger
I'm in Mumbai now with Nick awaiting the arrival of Ben, so that the next leg of the adventure can begin!
I was in the operating theatre. The surgeon had just extracted the lens from a cataract patient. Passing his tools and the lens to the nurse, she threw the lens at the bin – which missed and landed on my foot. We all had a bit of a laugh – being hit by a piece of a patient’s body is funny in any culture.
The view from my room at dusk
That’s about the only exceptional thing worth reporting. The rest of this post deals with the mundane, to give you some idea of what life is like in this part of India. Forgive my tardiness in posting, but the hospital internet tubes have become blocked again, so I have to walk 30 minutes each way to the internet café in the village.
Accommodation
Despite the Orwellian overtones, room 101 is good without being plus-good. The bed is un-good. The roof fan is a life-saver, although power cuts at night leave me uncomfortably hot.
Food
Something I love so much, I engage in it at least three times a day. Breakfast usually consists of a selection of (in descending preference):
-2-minutes-noodles-in-a-vaguely-curryish-sauce
-bananas, which are about 10cm long over here
-breakfast-vege-curry-with-peas
-deep-fried-bread-with-curried-potato-stuff
A surgeon investigating a patient using the slit-lamp
If we’re heading out to the vision camps, we’ll stop at a local restaurant, which serves the vege curry with either bread (pudi) or funny little rice cake things (idli). I can confirm that a sample of available Orissans and Bengalis do not like Vegemite and think it tastes ‘like medicine’ – not surprising, as few raised outside Australasia can tolerate Vegemite (apart from a couple of Québecois).
Lunch usually consists of rice with dhal on top (yellowy curried lentil sauce), plus some combination of fried/curried vegetables with the occasional fried egg. I’ve had fish twice and chicken once in 20 days. Dinner is pretty similar, but with the addition of chapatti (flat bread, like tortillas).
Orissans eschew utensils and eat with their (right) hand – I think this occurs all over India. I have progressed to the hybrid right-hand-plus-fork-in-left-hand method, because frankly it is pretty tricky eating rice with your hands. I aim to be proficiently utensil-less by the time I get to Nepal.
The foodisn’t bad, but it makes me realise how spoiled for choice we are in the West – particularly Auckland and London. In the week before I left London, I ate Chinese, Polish, Eritrean, Vietnamese, South African and a massive bloody steak (oh how I crave red meat). Here – it’s pretty much the same food every day. Sadly, the Indian dishes I love the most are from different parts of India (i.e. Vindaloo is from Goa, on the other side of the country). I haven’t managed to find a curry to beat the balti chilli masala from the brick lane Clipper, but I think I can by November.
Language
Wow, this is tricky. There are many, many languages in India. They speak Oriya here rather than Hindi. A few hundred clicks up the road they speak Bengali, although is similar enough to Oriya to allow cross-communication. Most of the staff here speak English to varying degrees, although the tricky thing for a native English speaker is to adjust to Indian English which has very different pronunciation. I was asked one lunch if I wanted ‘peas’ – I said yes, and some fish showed up. Oh, ‘peas’ is fish. Right. Being white usually means people (usually) speak English to me, although a few have tried speaking Oriya and appeared shocked when I stared blankly back at them (Oriya is hardly the first-choice Asian language to learn in New Zealand…).
Cultural differences
We’re certainly not in Kansas anymore, Toto. I should have written about ‘cultural similarities’, which would have been a shorter paragraph consisting of one word: cricket. I’m trying to get my head around just how populousIndia is. Orissa has 37 million people – about 9 times New Zealand’s population. Orissa has only about 3% of India’s population. ZOMG. New Zealand is tiny.
Elmo is a God here?
I get stared at a lot here. To be fair, I’m in a pretty rural part of India (think of flying into Gore then driving a few hours into the wops) where foreigners are pretty sparse (again, we forget what cultural melting pots London and Auckland are). Orissans apparently don’t have the same taboos against excessive staring that we do in the Anglo world – even returning the stare doesn’t stop the staring. I’m starting to get used to it now, but it does make you feel a bit paranoid.
Strangely enough, barely anyone smokes over here. Instead, all the cool kids chew a combination of tobacco and betel nut. This results in a lot of spitting, and red spots all over the ground; in addition to staining teeth brown. I have seen a few shops selling beer, but alcohol certainly doesn’t have the same visible presence it does in NZ & UK. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to the first beer in Mumbai when Nick and Ben arrive!
Rush hour in Orissa
Transportation
Wow, I’m glad I don’t have to drive here. There appear to be no road rules, and eternal horn use is the price for, um, partial safety. The only norms I have picked up is that traffic gives way to those coming on to a roundabout, and that it is the duty of the oncoming vehicle to avoid a collision – people will cross the road or pull out at any moment without looking. Oh yeah, and try to avoid the ubiquitous cows, goats and pigs on the roads. Buses are full of people (both inside and on the roof). I have yet to see the iconic ‘train with people clinging precariously to the sides’, but I will be taking a train in a week so we’ll see.
Some of the decorated trucks that grace Indian roads
Oh, and there are countless thousands of trucks painted in bright colours, like these:
I only have a few days left at the hospital, before I am off on my own again. I will be spending a few days around Orissa, heading to the beach and checking out a zoo with white tigers.
Having been in Kalinga Eye Hospital almost two weeks, I thought I had better fill everybody in on how the experience has been (yes Mum, I am still alive), and how your generous donations of money and glasses have been utilised.
After a rainy couple of days in Mumbai, I flew across to Bhubaneswar in Orissa, on the east coast of India (just down from Kolkata). I was met by a driver and taken to Dhenkanal, a small town in the rural interior of the state of Orissa – the location of Kalinga Eye Hospital (KEH), where I am spending the month. Orissa is one of the poorest states in India with a population of 37 million people, 85% of whom live in rural areas far from health care facilities.
The doctor screening patients at an outreach camp
KEH operates outreach camps, in which a team of ophthalmologists and paramedics drives to remote villages and screens patients for eye problems. Patients are brought back to KEH for surgery and further care if required, or treated on the spot when possible. Most patients brought back to the hospital require treatment for cataracts – a common condition where the lens inside the eye has become opaque over time, leading to loss of vision. Treatment is a quick operation involving the removal of the affected lens and insertion of an artificial intra-ocular lens (IOL). It is interesting to see how much more severe cataracts are here, and how they occur in much younger individuals than in developed countries. At Moorfields Eye Hospital in London I saw patients with cataracts, but they were nowhere near as severe as the cases here.
The surgeon and nurses in theatre
The efficiency and productivity of the staff is amazing – each surgical list can involve up to 40 patients in a morning, and some cataract surgeries take as little as 6 minutes! There are two side-by-side operating tables and nurses prepare one patient while the surgeon is operating on the other, enabling the surgeon to switch to the new patient once he is finished (see picture). For the ophthalmologists reading this, the surgeons primarily use the SICS technique with locally-made IOLs on patients under local anaesthetic and peribulbar/retrobulbar blocks. As your donations pay for these surgeries, the hospital requires a Unite For Sight volunteer to be present in the operating theatre, so it is good to be able to physically see how the money is being spent. After surgery, patients are provided with sunglasses to prevent sun damage while the eye is healing, and reading glasses to see close objects (as, unlike a natural lens, the artificial lens cannot change shape to focus on close objects).
I am holy. Go around me.
Conditions here are very hot and humid. I am here during the monsoon season, so heavy rain is a frequent occurrence. Electricity and internet work most and some of the time respectively. I am eating tasty vegetarian meals thrice daily, although I am really hankering for a steak! Cows are holy to Hindus, so beef is strictly off the menu (at least until I get back to Mumbai). I suspect that cows know this, and wander freely around town and country – including on the roads, where they will frequently stop and rest (see picture). The hospital staff are friendly and speak varying amounts of English, although I am sure they think me odd for putting vegemite on chapatti bread, and being 1-2 feet taller than most of the people here. However, I think I made up for the strangeness by showing my love of cricket, and not being too smug when New Zealand thrashed India by 200 runs the other day!
In the operating theatre
I have spent the first two weeks with Alina and Pallavi, two American students who are also volunteering with Unite For Sight (Emma – Alina goes to Cornell, I asked, but sadly she doesn’t know you). My days are spent either traveling to outreach camps, in the operating theatre, or working on projects with hospital management – I am researching ways the hospital can market itself to attract more paying customers, and improve its sustainability by reducing the dependence on charitable donations and NGOs.
Paramedic taking a patient's blood pressure
I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this worthy cause, in particular Sue Boucher and the Chichester Lions club, Peter Ring and friends and family for the donated glasses (they all made it here unbroken!), and Mr. Alex Ionides, Mr. Gus Gazzard and Mr. Sai Kolli at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London for the training and use of the focimeter. Thank you to all who have contributed to this very worthy cause, and I hope this email has provided an insight into how these donations have made an impact on people’s lives here.
