We have these beetles here. They’re pretty big, about the length of one of your fingers and fairly chubby. Most of the time they crawl around looking slightly retarded but at night time they fly about without even the slightest element of control, banging into whatever they can. You can notice that they are trying to get to our neon lights high on the wall, but instead they always just end up crashing into the wall and falling down onto the sand. Inevitably they fall onto their backs and then they stay there trying in vain to get right side up again. They wiggle their little beetle legs like mad fuckers for hours on end, just trying to get back on their feet. Sometimes you feel slightly charitable and you toss one of them over with your flip flop, only for the gobshite to fly straight into the wall again and fall onto his back again.
I’m the logistician on a nutrition project in the centre of Chad, a place called Bokoro. We have a nice little garden, which comes alive at night. As far as I’m concerned the only animal that has any brains are the little froggies that come out and just sit underneath the lights to gorge on the variety of kamikaze insects which fall down whilst trying to ‘attain’ the light. We also have a fearless rat. You’ll be making yourself a cuppa cha in the kitchen and he’ll just stroll in and look at you as if to say: “What’s goin’ on brother, any food hanging around anywhere that I could nibble on?”
It’s still pretty hot, but you can feel it starting to cool down ever so slightly. Things should become nice and cool over the next four to six weeks or so, as we come into ‘winter’. Imagine the nicest possible day that Ireland has ever seen… that’s the Chadian winter! And the locals will wrap up with hats and scarfs and gloves and shit like that while yours truly will sweating in his T-shirt.
I extended my mission until the 10th of December, asking if I could be placed as a logistician on a field project for the last month and half. The idea was to get a bit of field experience and an idea about life without the Novotel swimming pool (OK… I admit it… I also thought that maybe I could shed a gentle pound or two).
I’m here a week today and so far all is going good. I did a 76-person payroll today and have to make sure that everything non-medical keeps on working. We have an intensive feeding and observation ward in the town hospital and we send three teams out every day to ambulatory feeding centres who conduct therapeutic feeding in ten villages around the region and then refer the intensive cases back to the hospital. It’s all a bit mad. We’ve also started distributing 20tonnes of food rations to the families in our programs every week, which has its fair share of logistical challenges.
So I only have six weeks or so left until I’m finished in Chad. I’m coming home on (or around) the 10th of December for the Yuletide banter. It should be good fun considering I don’t have the cost of a pint. (If you see me over Christmas, feel free to ply me with booze… it’s the same as donating money to MSF… not quite as tax deductible though!).
After that who knows… I’ll definitely go away again (if they’ll have me) in the New Year. First preference is Colombia, but half of world wants to go there. Apparently when people go there, they extend and extend their missions and then they end up marrying a local and staying there. So it’s kind of one-way traffic, which is unfortunate for those of us who want to dance meringue while saving kiddies lives. If it’s not Colombia then second choice would be Congo, but realistically I’d go anywhere they wanted me to.
I had a great time in Ethiopia with Barry back at the beginning of September (yeah, I know that’s a long time ago… so what… what are you trying to say… Don’t even f&%king mention the lack of updates… its taboo!). We went hiking in the Simien mountains for the first week and then just chilled out soaking in the rich culture of Ethiopia’s nicest hotels for the second week. Except for a small bout of diarrhea (worst in a long time actually), it was a great two weeks.
Anyway, that’s all for now… I’ve gotta go to bed so that I have a clear head tomorrow morning when I try to ensure that the guard and driver roster for November takes into account who doesn’t like working with who and all the other finer sensitivities of the intricate pattern that is the Chadian social sphere.
Your (yes, repenting!) man in Chad,
C.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
G&T's on the verandaaaaaah!
Its surprising the little things that I miss from home: The certainty that the light will go on when you flick the switch, or that water will come if you turn on a tap, the ability to wake up in a dry bed and not one that is soaked through by your own sweat, flies as an occasional pest rather than a permanent resident on your face.
I’m sitting here in the dark on our terrace. Our generator needs a break, and having left the office early (half past six), I’m the only one home and can’t warrant it being on for me alone. My skin has been prickling all day with something called prickly heat, so I had a shower when I got home and am already drenched in sweat again. I put some talcum powder on my arms so as to dry them out but that’s just turned into a moist paste by this stage.
So… the heat! Well, I suppose it’s not as bad as I expected… although it is pretty bad! Everyone always said it was going to get hot, so it’s not like I didn’t expect it, and I had enough time to acclimatize to it. But it is particularly bad. Daytime temperatures hit fifty almost on a daily basis now. In the evenings it cools by about ten degrees but is still fairly uncomfortable. Apparently MSF doesn’t believe in air conditioning, so we’re kept alive by fans. There have been some nights when the generator was on the blink, we didn’t have fans. You don’t sleep then! You just squelch around in your bed and get up every half hour to drink more water. Our entire house is like a big furnace. It soaks up heat all day every day and belches it out from the walls all night. The walls and floors are hot to touch, as is everything else. When you get up in the morning and put on your clothes, they are hot. When you go to lie in your bed at night, it feels like you have left your electric blanket on too long.
We have an air conditioned storage facility for our medical stock. Even with the air conditioners on 24/7, we only get the temperature down to about 28 degrees, but when you come into it, it feels positively artic. 28 degrees and you have goosepimples on your arms.
So that’s enough about the heat. In other news, I had quite a night at a Red Cross party on Friday. I came back from work at about half past seven and hit the G&T’s with a vengeance. By the time we left here for the party, we were feeling no pain and ended up having a smacker of a night. For some reason I don’t have the strength to resist jumping into swimming pools fully clothed, so the night ended up with me dragging half a beachful of sand back to my bed with me.
On the work end of things, all is good! It’s still not getting any quieter though. The level of activity is freakishly intense. Today we loaded a seven and half tonne truck to the gills to send it out to the project in Am Timan. We sent them drugs, an incinerator, therapeutic food, medical supplies, construction materials, fuel and a partridge in a pear tree. The rainy season is on its way here and we need to get the projects stocked up before the rains start as the roads will become impassable. One of the projects will essentially be cut off during the wet season with access only possible by air.
Last week I was lucky enough to go on a little road movement. We don’t do many of them here since we had a kidnapping in the east last year, but we’re starting to get into it again slowly but surely, ensuring that security is managed to a tee. However, mine was only a little one. We drove about three hours outside of N’Djamena to a town called Gelengdeng, where we distributed medical kits for the treatment of simple and complex measles cases to the local health authorities there. We also took the opportunity to see what the scale of measles outbreaks were and reported this back to HQ… all very exiting! Unfortunately, there wasn’t even the slightest whiff of a kidnapping and we made it back to base safely before nightfall (by my reckoning, you could lose weight at a fierce rate if you got kidnapped for a little bit).
Anway, that’s all for now, the electricity has just come back on so I’m gonna camp down in front of a fan.
L8r,
Ur man in Chad…
I’m sitting here in the dark on our terrace. Our generator needs a break, and having left the office early (half past six), I’m the only one home and can’t warrant it being on for me alone. My skin has been prickling all day with something called prickly heat, so I had a shower when I got home and am already drenched in sweat again. I put some talcum powder on my arms so as to dry them out but that’s just turned into a moist paste by this stage.
So… the heat! Well, I suppose it’s not as bad as I expected… although it is pretty bad! Everyone always said it was going to get hot, so it’s not like I didn’t expect it, and I had enough time to acclimatize to it. But it is particularly bad. Daytime temperatures hit fifty almost on a daily basis now. In the evenings it cools by about ten degrees but is still fairly uncomfortable. Apparently MSF doesn’t believe in air conditioning, so we’re kept alive by fans. There have been some nights when the generator was on the blink, we didn’t have fans. You don’t sleep then! You just squelch around in your bed and get up every half hour to drink more water. Our entire house is like a big furnace. It soaks up heat all day every day and belches it out from the walls all night. The walls and floors are hot to touch, as is everything else. When you get up in the morning and put on your clothes, they are hot. When you go to lie in your bed at night, it feels like you have left your electric blanket on too long.
We have an air conditioned storage facility for our medical stock. Even with the air conditioners on 24/7, we only get the temperature down to about 28 degrees, but when you come into it, it feels positively artic. 28 degrees and you have goosepimples on your arms.
So that’s enough about the heat. In other news, I had quite a night at a Red Cross party on Friday. I came back from work at about half past seven and hit the G&T’s with a vengeance. By the time we left here for the party, we were feeling no pain and ended up having a smacker of a night. For some reason I don’t have the strength to resist jumping into swimming pools fully clothed, so the night ended up with me dragging half a beachful of sand back to my bed with me.
On the work end of things, all is good! It’s still not getting any quieter though. The level of activity is freakishly intense. Today we loaded a seven and half tonne truck to the gills to send it out to the project in Am Timan. We sent them drugs, an incinerator, therapeutic food, medical supplies, construction materials, fuel and a partridge in a pear tree. The rainy season is on its way here and we need to get the projects stocked up before the rains start as the roads will become impassable. One of the projects will essentially be cut off during the wet season with access only possible by air.
Last week I was lucky enough to go on a little road movement. We don’t do many of them here since we had a kidnapping in the east last year, but we’re starting to get into it again slowly but surely, ensuring that security is managed to a tee. However, mine was only a little one. We drove about three hours outside of N’Djamena to a town called Gelengdeng, where we distributed medical kits for the treatment of simple and complex measles cases to the local health authorities there. We also took the opportunity to see what the scale of measles outbreaks were and reported this back to HQ… all very exiting! Unfortunately, there wasn’t even the slightest whiff of a kidnapping and we made it back to base safely before nightfall (by my reckoning, you could lose weight at a fierce rate if you got kidnapped for a little bit).
Anway, that’s all for now, the electricity has just come back on so I’m gonna camp down in front of a fan.
L8r,
Ur man in Chad…
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
It’s my blog… and I’ll cry when I want to!
Yes, I’m feeling slightly guilty about my lack of posting but I’ve been a busy bunny, so what can I do… tough titties! I’m here now, fingers sliding around my dusty keyboard, so stop looking at me like that and be grateful.
I’m sitting on our terrace looking out on our front garden. The pink of our bougainvilla is the only contrast in a sea of beige. There’s been a ‘Harmatan’ going on for the past week or two. That’s a sandstorm for those of you not au fait with the desert lingo of Northern Africa. Last week, it grounded all air travel, reduced visibility to about 20 metres and covered everything (and everyone) in fine layers of Sahelian dust. All African look like they’ve aged about 20 years overnight, with a distinguished speckle of grey in their hair and eyebrows… silver foxes everywhere you look!
There’s always been dust here… As soon as I arrived I noted the tendency for everything to gather the amounts of dust in a day that I would normally expect from something left idle for a year or two. We have a cleaner in the office, Monsieur Martin, whose ostrich feather dusters see more action than Tiger Woods would in a brothel. He’s a funny little man, whose eternal task to keep our desks dust-free is comparable to that of Sisyphus, the Greek mythical figure condemned to eternally roll a boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll all the way back down again before reaching the top.
What suffer most are your various (exposed) orifices though. Blowing your nose reveals a rockery that any gardener would be proud of, and a quick scrape out of your ears would provide the raw materials for an artificial beach.
However, the good thing is that an atmosphere of sand seems to be good at keeping the heat out. It’s been a lot cooler since the storms started. We were hitting 43/44 degrees beforehand but now the thermometer stays below 35 and sleeping at night is a much more pleasant affair.
So on Friday, we kicked off a measles vaccination campaign here in N’Djamena. The target is to vaccinate all children in the city between 6 months and 16 years of age against measles: that’s approximately half a million screaming kiddies. I’m not really involved in the campaign as my role is to ensure the supply of our existing projects, but I’ve got a direct link to the emergency teams flown in for the occasion and am getting a good insight into what’s going on (without having to sacrifice my Sundays, ‘tanks be to de holy lord Jayzuz’ – to be read in a Dublin accent)! We’ve rented a fleet of about fifty pickups for the occasion, and you can’t throw a welly without hitting an MSF vehicle in N’Djamena at the moment.
In other news, I really feel like I’m getting a grasp on my work. At the beginning, everything was reactive and ‘mildly chaotic’ (to say the frickin’ least)… But now, I’m getting some good Germanic order onto things and for the first time being able to proactively plan for the future. The coordination team in the capital has suffered from high turnover of expat staff in the past but things are beginning to get embedded with longer term people arriving and establishing their functions!
Although I do have to say that I kind of like the turnover of expat staff as well. It’s cool having so many new faces in the house. Everyone brings something different to the table!
I’ve booked my holidays… Yippee kayee mofo! I’m off back to the old continent on the 14th of May for three whole weeks of dustless splendour. My lil’ bro, Gavin, is getting married to his long term girlfriend, Rowena, in France at the end of May, so that’ll be a great opportunity for me to show off my dance moves. Can’t frickin’ wait to get home and see everyone again.
OK, that’s all on the ticker for now. I’m gonna go and have a look at one of these vaccination sites today, so I’ll report back on that in due course (or not, whatever I feel like…. Muwehehehehehe!)
Ur man with sand up his nose,
C.
PS: I know that there are an awful lot of you that find my rants soooo interesting that it could be termed an addiction, so you’ll be happy to hear that I’m now officially available for additional drivel on MSF Ireland’s site here… slightly less bad language and slightly more PR
PS: The L shaped house in the middle of this satellite photo is where I live ;-)
View Larger Map
I’m sitting on our terrace looking out on our front garden. The pink of our bougainvilla is the only contrast in a sea of beige. There’s been a ‘Harmatan’ going on for the past week or two. That’s a sandstorm for those of you not au fait with the desert lingo of Northern Africa. Last week, it grounded all air travel, reduced visibility to about 20 metres and covered everything (and everyone) in fine layers of Sahelian dust. All African look like they’ve aged about 20 years overnight, with a distinguished speckle of grey in their hair and eyebrows… silver foxes everywhere you look!
There’s always been dust here… As soon as I arrived I noted the tendency for everything to gather the amounts of dust in a day that I would normally expect from something left idle for a year or two. We have a cleaner in the office, Monsieur Martin, whose ostrich feather dusters see more action than Tiger Woods would in a brothel. He’s a funny little man, whose eternal task to keep our desks dust-free is comparable to that of Sisyphus, the Greek mythical figure condemned to eternally roll a boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll all the way back down again before reaching the top.
What suffer most are your various (exposed) orifices though. Blowing your nose reveals a rockery that any gardener would be proud of, and a quick scrape out of your ears would provide the raw materials for an artificial beach.
However, the good thing is that an atmosphere of sand seems to be good at keeping the heat out. It’s been a lot cooler since the storms started. We were hitting 43/44 degrees beforehand but now the thermometer stays below 35 and sleeping at night is a much more pleasant affair.
So on Friday, we kicked off a measles vaccination campaign here in N’Djamena. The target is to vaccinate all children in the city between 6 months and 16 years of age against measles: that’s approximately half a million screaming kiddies. I’m not really involved in the campaign as my role is to ensure the supply of our existing projects, but I’ve got a direct link to the emergency teams flown in for the occasion and am getting a good insight into what’s going on (without having to sacrifice my Sundays, ‘tanks be to de holy lord Jayzuz’ – to be read in a Dublin accent)! We’ve rented a fleet of about fifty pickups for the occasion, and you can’t throw a welly without hitting an MSF vehicle in N’Djamena at the moment.
In other news, I really feel like I’m getting a grasp on my work. At the beginning, everything was reactive and ‘mildly chaotic’ (to say the frickin’ least)… But now, I’m getting some good Germanic order onto things and for the first time being able to proactively plan for the future. The coordination team in the capital has suffered from high turnover of expat staff in the past but things are beginning to get embedded with longer term people arriving and establishing their functions!
Although I do have to say that I kind of like the turnover of expat staff as well. It’s cool having so many new faces in the house. Everyone brings something different to the table!
I’ve booked my holidays… Yippee kayee mofo! I’m off back to the old continent on the 14th of May for three whole weeks of dustless splendour. My lil’ bro, Gavin, is getting married to his long term girlfriend, Rowena, in France at the end of May, so that’ll be a great opportunity for me to show off my dance moves. Can’t frickin’ wait to get home and see everyone again.
OK, that’s all on the ticker for now. I’m gonna go and have a look at one of these vaccination sites today, so I’ll report back on that in due course (or not, whatever I feel like…. Muwehehehehehe!)
Ur man with sand up his nose,
C.
PS: I know that there are an awful lot of you that find my rants soooo interesting that it could be termed an addiction, so you’ll be happy to hear that I’m now officially available for additional drivel on MSF Ireland’s site here… slightly less bad language and slightly more PR
PS: The L shaped house in the middle of this satellite photo is where I live ;-)
View Larger Map
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Pics
So, I'm back in N'Djamena. I had a lovely weekend in Abeche on my way back... It's nice to be back to my room and the food here :)
See below for some pics from my trip to the field!
Ur man in N'Djamena...
See below for some pics from my trip to the field!
Ur man in N'Djamena...
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Its not your Mi-Riverbed, Its my Mi-Riverbed!
We just watched a rom-com set in New York and I was going to bed all doe
eyed when my torch picks up a silhouette on the wall. It's a very
recognizable shape and before I can even find the word for it, my mind is
ringing alarm bells. "ehhh, I think there's a scorpion on the ground there!"
I eventually manage to dribble. Whattodo, whattodo. it's me or him, him or
me! "Standondamudderfucker" jumps into my mind and before I get a chance to
analyse the situation any further, my flip flop is jamming down on top of
this poor creature with immense force. I swear to God, I never made a
conscious decision to do it, it just happened! Had I thought about it at
all, I'm sure I would have run away whimpering like a little girl, but I
didn't get a chance to think about, my foot took over and squashed the
little bastard until he was a gooey mess of bits of shell and evil stingers!
eyed when my torch picks up a silhouette on the wall. It's a very
recognizable shape and before I can even find the word for it, my mind is
ringing alarm bells. "ehhh, I think there's a scorpion on the ground there!"
I eventually manage to dribble. Whattodo, whattodo. it's me or him, him or
me! "Standondamudderfucker" jumps into my mind and before I get a chance to
analyse the situation any further, my flip flop is jamming down on top of
this poor creature with immense force. I swear to God, I never made a
conscious decision to do it, it just happened! Had I thought about it at
all, I'm sure I would have run away whimpering like a little girl, but I
didn't get a chance to think about, my foot took over and squashed the
little bastard until he was a gooey mess of bits of shell and evil stingers!
I have to say that I did feel very brave afterwards though. I thought to
myself "must get to computer, must write blog post to redeem myself after
last weeks frog antics".
So now that I'm here I might as well mention what a nice Sunday I had today.
I woke up at half six but didn't have to get up, so kept on slumbering until
nine. Then I got up and had a breakfast of champions: Muesli with milk
powder and cold water and some baguette with butter and apricot jam. And
some peanuts of course. I have peanuts with every meal here. and as a snack
between meals. and as a snack between snacks. and just before I go to bed.
and just after I go to the loo. in fact pretty much every time I inhale, a
peanut enters my system. They're the loveliest peanuts in the whole world as
well!
So then I finally finished my book. My boyfriend Barry gave me a book called
'Africa' before I left. It's a great read cos every chapter is a different
country and you get a bit of a socio political history as well as a little
anecdote or two. The only trouble is that I feel mildly mortified reading it
in public, my first mission greenness already well noted amongst my
colleagues. It's not exactly kosher sitting by the pool with "Africa for
Dummies" slapped open in front of you!
Sara's the doctor here in Kerfi (which by the way is the other of our
projects in the east of the country which I'm visiting at the moment -
should really have mentioned that in the start) and we did pancakes for
lunch and then I slumbered on the couch afterwards waving the flies away.
The flies are pretty bad here, they annoy the fuck out of you and their
objective in life seems to be to get inside your head via either your nose
or your ear.
After siesta, we went for a walk down to the wadi. I'm gonna explain what a
wadi is cos when I got to Chad, everyone assumed that everyone just knew
what a wadi is and they were all like "wadi this" and "wadi that" and I
didn't have a rashers what they were on about. So for everyone who doesn't
know what a wadi is, it's a dry riverbed that becomes a river in the wet
season and is then just a sandy riverbed in the dry season. So the walk was
cool anyway and we saw people getting water from wells and cutting bricks
out of the earth and generally having a bit of a laugh on a Sunday
afternoon.
The town of Kerfi is quite small. There are about 5000 inhabitants and the
same again in displaced people who have set up camp here. Our project is a
Health centre with an inpatients department, outpatients clinic, maternity
ward and therapeutic feeding centre. Sara's the doctor in charge and we have
a few Chadian nurses as well.
So I'm off to my bed now cos I've a rake of shit to do tomorrow. I have to
fill sandbags for our safe room and try to somehow build a morgue table with
drainage for washing dead bodies. Should be interesting!
I'll try to post some pics as soon as I get back to base in N'Djamena.
Ur man in Chad!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Fat Frog
The fucking embarrassment of it... Just as I was beginning to get some
'street cred' with the locals here! I came into my tukul tonight (a round
thatched hut that the locals live in) and what do I see sittin' there
nestled in amongst my smalls, but a big fat frog. He was just sitting there
looking at me with this 'what the fuck are YOU looking at' look on his fat
froggy face! So needless to say, your correspondent don's his best Indiana
Jones hat and... goes out to ask if anyone has experience with tukul frog
decontamination. So one of the girls (if you don't mind) immediately jumps
up and runs over to the guards to elicit their support in the venture. In
the meantime, I'm turning absolutely cringingly red while the guards look up
at me like I'm some kind of absolute dumbfuck and start roaring their arses
off laughing.
'street cred' with the locals here! I came into my tukul tonight (a round
thatched hut that the locals live in) and what do I see sittin' there
nestled in amongst my smalls, but a big fat frog. He was just sitting there
looking at me with this 'what the fuck are YOU looking at' look on his fat
froggy face! So needless to say, your correspondent don's his best Indiana
Jones hat and... goes out to ask if anyone has experience with tukul frog
decontamination. So one of the girls (if you don't mind) immediately jumps
up and runs over to the guards to elicit their support in the venture. In
the meantime, I'm turning absolutely cringingly red while the guards look up
at me like I'm some kind of absolute dumbfuck and start roaring their arses
off laughing.
So now the whole compound is rolling around the floor breaking their shits
laughing and I still have a fat frog livin' it up in my undies! So
eventually Zaccharia, one of the guards, takes the initiative and makes for
my tukul. Everyone jumps up and follows and we all bundle in while he
gingerly lifts the fat fucker off my knickers and gently places it outside
in a puddle under the tree, where Fatty McFatfuck just ribbits off happy as
a pig in shit, oblivious to the fact that he's just made me out to be the
biggest girls blouse since Scooby Doo.
Anyway, I'm outta here tomorrow so I dun give a rats ass anymore.
I'm in Am Timan, a town of approximately 40000 people in the east of Chad. I
came here about a week ago cos there were a few measles cases and we were
gearing up for a potential epidemic and a vaccination campaign. However, the
cases subsided so the campaign was put on hold while the situation is
monitored.
We flew out from N'Djamena on a WFP (World Food Programme) flight. The WFP
provides a few flights in the country for its own staff and staff from other
NGO's can avail of them as well. The flight dropped us off in Abeche, the
main eastern city, from where we jumped into our own little MSF plane, a
Cessna Caravan.
In preparation for a vaccination campaign, we had sent a truck full of
supplies from N'Djamena the previous day, and we were flying to meet it at
its destination in Am Timan. We literally sent everything that you would
need to vaccinate 20,000 people: from the pens that you would mark
vaccination cards with, to the needles, to the chairs that the vaccinators
sit on, to the tent that we would sleep in, to the mattresses that we would
sleep on, to the generators that we would need for electricity to the
chlorine for making drinking water etc. etc. etc.. It was unbelievable. We
were literally prepared to vaccinate 20,000 people in the middle of the
desert and be completely self sufficient!
The measles vaccine is a small dose of the measles virus. It is freeze dried
but must be kept between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius until the second it is
injected into the arm. Not so easy when you're in a desert! The so-called
'cold chain', ensuring that vaccinations are kept cold from when they ship
from Amsterdam all the way until they end up being injected into someone in
the Chadian countryside, is a very demanding process. To that end, we had
two large cool boxes of measles vaccination with us in the plane, packed
full with icepacks, and on the truck we had generators, fridges, freezers,
cool boxes, icepacks, thermos bags and more thermometers than you can shake
a stick at.
So first of all our little Cessna landed on what I am told was an airstrip
but what I would describe more accurately as a (fairly) barren piece of
desert, where we picked up Christa, who was to be the supervising nurse for
the campaign. Christa is in her sixties and has done her fair share of MSF
missions before. She had been working at another of our projects in Kerfi
where the airstrip was.
So then we took off again and ten minutes later we were landing in Am Timan
airstrip. The pilots did a flyover first to scare all the goats and kids off
the airstrip and once it was clear, we touched down. to a fairly sizable
audience of onlookers.
The Am Timan team were on the ground ready to collect us and our cold chain
and we made off to the base in two Landcruisers.
The Landcruisers are standard MSF fare when it comes to transportation.
However, there's a slight drawback to them in Chad. they keep on getting
nicked by bandits! Apparently it's not nice being held up at gunpoint and
having your wheels nicked, so there's been a change of strategy:
Landcruisers are not to be used anymore, and instead we got a fleet of
little 4x4 Jimny's, which the rebels don't like that much. In order to
further dissuade them from pilfering our motors, we got them painted bright
pink. Bright pink is not the 'in' colour for rebels this year!
So anyway, since I got here, there have been no more measles cases and it's
all been deescalated. But still, it's been very exciting (thanks for the
spellcheck mum!). The project coordinator really involved me in things and
its been great. She brought me to meet the governor of the province who we
had tea with. I also met the local village elders today in a community
meeting. MSF's project here is only just starting up, so there's a flurry of
political activity getting all the authorities on board and agreeing on what
our mandate is etc. The plan is to support the pediatric and maternity units
of the local hospital.
It's also been a good opportunity to look at the supply for the project and
to ensure that we're estimating our consumption correctly etc. etc. etc. I
was originally brought in to cover the logistics for the vaccination
campaign and now that it's not happening, I'm heading back to the comfort of
N'Djamena tomorrow. But it's been really interesting to see how a project
works, I feel much more able to support it now on the supply side of things.
Now I have to go to sort out my feet. it's so frickin' dry here and my feet
are completely kaput, flakin' like mofo's and breaking around the heels etc.
I got myself a big tub of Vaseline which I've been horsing onto them on a
nightly basis, so here goes again.
Ur man in Am Timan,
C.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Carrie Bradshaw, eat your heart out!
So how's my psyche? Without being too much of a big girls blouse, I'm trying
to keep an eye on what's going on in my head!
to keep an eye on what's going on in my head!
Before I got here, I was very excited about the whole thing. Now that I've
arrived, I'm very excited about being here. Later on this week, I'm going
out to the field, and I'm very excited about that. Are you seeing a trend
here? When will this excitement end. and more to the point, what will it be
replaced with?
At the moment, I'm working very hard. I was traveling in Southern Asia for a
year until last June and since then I had been at home in Dublin, gleefully
drawing the dole and sitting around scratching myself. So it's been a good
year and a half since I've 'worked', and this is all coming as a bit of a
shock to my system.
I get to the base between seven and half past seven every morning. It's only
a ten minute walk from the compound we live in, so I get up at around
quarter past six which leaves me enough time for a bowl of cornflakes and a
shower before I hit the road. err, sand! I work until 1pm when I head home
for some lunch and then back to the base for 2pm. I make a point of leaving
the base by 6pm every evening, when our curfew kicks in and we don't walk
around outside anymore (we can still move around after that, but need to be
driven).
So when I'm in the base, I'm basically running around like a headless
chicken. Being responsible for supply means that I'm responsible for
getting the right materials and equipment to the projects and in the right
quantities, keeping stocks to a minimum and keeping a good overview of
what's in the country.
By the time I get home in the evenings, I'm ready to expire. I usually fall
into the scratcher around 10pm or so. As soon as I pull down my mosquito
net, I'm unwakeable until my symphony of alarm clocks start again at 6am the
next morning.
Everything's new and novel and shiny and fun and happy and good at the
moment, but I've heard one or two of the other expats refer to a 'honeymoon
period' so I'm trying to be aware of that. I'm going to adamantly defend my
leisure time, trying to leave the office at six, only working a few hours on
Saturday's and keeping Sunday's completely free.
I mentioned I'm going out to the field this week. There have been a few
cases of measles reported in one of the towns we are working in the east of
the country and a vaccination campaign for 20,000 children is on the cards.
Its appears to be fairly small campaign by MSF standards so it's a good
opportunity to get my feet wet and to see what a project is like on the
ground (the raison d'etre of it all). Once I'm back from that, I'll head out
again to see the other project that we have in the east. (At the moment,
it's just the two projects that we have in Chad).
More soon from the field hopefully (if I can find internet)
Ur man ready for his scratcher!
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Landing!
So… A week after I got back to Dublin from India at the end of June last, I
was walking through my old alma mater, Trinity College, when I spotted a
poster that the universe conspired to hang in my line of vision: "MSF Info
Evening, Walton Theatre, 7pm".
was walking through my old alma mater, Trinity College, when I spotted a
poster that the universe conspired to hang in my line of vision: "MSF Info
Evening, Walton Theatre, 7pm".
For those of you that don't know it, the acronym stands for 'Médecins Sans
Frontières' ('Doctors without Borders'). It's an NGO which I had always
heard the name of, but didn't know too much about. I knew that it was
something about medical aid and thought that it was French. I suppose having
lived in Paris for a year, I would have heard it bantered about… in France
it was considered the NGO 'par excellence', the equivalent of Concern in
Ireland or Oxfam in the UK. However, it's 'frenchness' has changed and it is
now an international organisation.
So to cut a long story very, very short indeed, I now find myself having
volunteered for (or been employed by, depending on how you look at it) MSF
and I started my job as a supply logistician in N'Djamena, the capital city
of Chad in Central Africa, on the 31st of December, 2009, the final day of
the so-called 'noughties'.
I will spend at least the next nine months based here in N'Djamena, trying
my best to ensure that MSF projects in the East of the country get the
medicines and materials they need to fulfill their objectives.
It's quite bizarre to find myself in this situation because, in theory, this
is what I've always wanted. Since my early twenties, my lofty career
objective has been to become a dynamic problem solver in an aid or
development field scenario. I thought about the UN, the EU, IrishAid,
Concern, Goal, Trocaire and many other organizations in this field… but all
I did was 'think' about them. I never applied to anything or made much
effort to actually land such a position. In my head, I had rationalised this
'laziness' by saying that I would spend my twenties gathering relevant work
experience so that I could be active in this sector by the time I was 30.
And then what happens: all the powers of the universe, all the karma, all
the deities and spirits and fung shui and all that malarkey come together
and represent themselves in a little white A4 sheet, clumsily sello-taped to
a wall, brandishing the insignia of my future! Step 1: Go to the Walton
Theatre… Does it get any easier?
Well… apparently it does! I spent today snoozing on a deck chair at the side
of a pool in the Le Meridien Hotel here. It was a very humanitarian
experience altogether! Having fought it out in Dublin's damp cold for the
past few months, what a frickin' pleasure it was to chill the hell out and
catch some of those Central African rays.
Now before anyone gets the wrong idea, let me qualify myself here by saying
that I get a certain daily allowance here to spend (or save) as I wish.
Being a Sunday, and pretty much the only day of rest in an otherwise jammed
week, I decided to fork out the exorbitant entry fee and let my weary body
bask in the winter sun.
I arrived into N'Djamena at 11pm on the 30th, three days later than
scheduled due to visa f*&k-ups combined with a passport caught up in the
Christmas postal pandemonium. It was a good time to get here though. New
Years Eve was a day of briefings and inductions followed by a NYE session to
break the ice with the new team (and NGO expat community). New Years Day was
a bank holiday and I nursed myself back to health before a light day of
briefings on Saturday and the aforementioned day of sun-worship today.
Tomorrow though, (sh)it will hit the fan … My first full week of supply
logistics!
I have to be in top form though, and given that I start work at half seven,
I'm off now to catch forty winks… Must try not to get tangled up in my
mosquito net tonight.
Your man in Chad!
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Bold Blogger...
I have been a very bad blogger…. I broke the two main rules of blogging:
1. I told a lie
2. I left my blog unupdated for a long, long time…
How can I expect that anyone reads this anymore… well I don’t… but I’m hoping that someone still is ;-)
So… the lie! How did it happen? Well first of all, it was only a white lie, there were elements of it that were true but I was lean on the truth. In my last post, I said I was in Calcutta thinking about what to do next. This was only partially true… I was sitting on an aeroplane, having just flown from Guwahati in the northeast. My flight stopped in Calcutta on its way to Mumbai. Also, I wasn’t thinking about what to do next, I knew full well that I was staying one night in Mumbai and then flying from there back to Dublin through Abu Dhabi.
My plane left Mumbai on the 21st of June, the expiry date on my visa and the last day I was going to be legit in India. Ten days beforehand, I had been searching the web looking for ways to get into Bangladesh… For shits and giggles, I went on a mission to see how cheaply I could get a flight back to Dublin for. When I found a flight for 280 Euros I began to get mild shivers down my back at the prospect of coming home. I had my credit card in my pocket. I took it out and placed it in front of the computer. I clicked ‘book’. I entered my details and I thought to myself: “Do I want to press the confirm button”… I felt good about it! I did it!
As soon as it was done, I got very, very exited about the prospect of coming home. I was a bit weary from being away… I had lived out of a rucksack for the guts of a year and the prospect of Bangladesh or Nepal wasn’t getting me as worked up as it should have been. I didn’t want to go somewhere and not be in a mood to take full advantage of it; I wouldn’t have been doing either country justice.
Also, my bank account had finally come down to zero. Don’t ask me how I had enough money to last that long abroad without going into debt, but somehow I did. I had previously thought that I was well ready to use up my overdraft facility and to max out my three credit cards, but I decided in the end, that that would have been very difficult once I got settled down.
So I came back to Ireland, where for the past six months I have been doing … nothing! Nothing at all! I shared a room in Temple Bar to keep down my costs, collected the dole which kept me fed and watered, did a shift or two a week as a waiter to sponsor the occasional piss-up and dug into my overdraft facility and credit cards. I've had a very relaxing, very enjoyable six months.
I was originally supposed to head down to Melbourne for a year but I found something better to do… I’ll update on what that was in the next post… Suffice to say that it’s what I’ve always wanted to do!
I’m off to Africa on Sunday… Will explain more in my next post (they’ll be coming fast from now on...)!
Your man packing his bags in Dublin…
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tribal Antics
Back in the land of moustaches again… that is lowland north India… In Calcutta now thinking about how to cross the Bangladeshi border. The thing is that it’s Friday afternoon and the embassies are closed until Monday. Unfortunately my Indian visa runs out on Sunday, so in theory I’d need to get out of here by then. Could chance it at the Bangla border without a visa but I’ve heard from other Irish people that they got laughed at when they tried that (although in theory the Irish don’t need a visa for tourist purposes – theorizing with border guards don’t always work though!). If that doesn’t work then I could make a beeline for Kathmandu, but I’ve got Bangladesh on the brain now. Maybe I’ll just overstay my Indian visa for a day, sort out my Bangladeshi one on Monday and go then. I’ll be a day late, but the Indian guards shouldn’t go too mad on that… I might just have to grease them up with some baksheesh to keep ‘em sweet! Anyway, it won’t have been the first time I’ve overstayed a visa and been an illegal alien… (USA, Bolivia, Pakistan…)
Anyway, let’s see what happens… In theory I could go anywhere I want, so we’ll see where I end up.
I’ve spent the last few days in a tribal village called Umsavvar in the East Khasi Hills of Megalaya, outside Shillong. It was a brilliant experience. A development worker I met in Shillong, Prince, invited me to accompany him to this village where his work was focused on education. He had a hut there and had been accepted by the villagers, so it was a great opportunity. I sat on the roofrack of a jeep for three hours while we dirt-roaded our way there (sore arse extraordinaire!)
There are three tribes in the State of Megalaya: the Khasi, the Genthia and the Goru. This village is Khasi and I met many of the villagers during the two days I was there. Prince brought me from house to house introducing me as Khana from Ri Pharang or The Foreign Land (as if there was only one). He also acted as an interpreter and would translate so that the villagers could ask questions. They asked about what we ate in my country, about my family and my work, about the weather and about my travels. I asked them about there kids, their work, their festivals and village traditions.
The village was pretty poor, without electricity or phones or anything like that. The land there was rocky and not arable, so people made broomsticks out of brush they found in a nearby gorge. Prince had been visiting the village for ten years and had established a school there and some other education-linked initiatives.
One of the interesting things about the Khasi tribe is that they are matrilineal. This means that the mother’s clan is of primary importance, rather than that of the father as is usually the case. Children inherit their mothers name only, and all property and wealth is passed on to the youngest daughter. The birth of a daughter is celebrated here as a son would be in the rest of India (given that a dowry is necessary for a daughter normally).
On a tangential note, I only found out last week that pre-natal gender determination is illegal in India, since in the past, female foeti have been aborted upon such. Is that mad or what?
Anyway, as I was saying: matrilineal… sounds alright doesn’t it? But it’s a bit weird as well! It’s not that it’s a feminist inclined society, considering power is still wielded by men: The local durbar, or village council, is a men only affair, with women banned. It’s just that the mother’s clan is of prime importance, i.e. The most important man in the family is the mother’s brother, as opposed to the father. This means that the nuclear family, as we know it in Europe, doesn’t really exist here and men are left slightly disenfranchised and tend to disappear off the scene as soon as their child is born.
I also spent the few days horsing this paan into me. They chew it all the time here, paan being to the Subcontinent what the coca leaf is to the Andes. In the northeast, they have a particularly vile concoction, which I have found myself actually getting quite used to: they wrap up a chunk of betel nut in a leaf from the paan tree smeared with a small bit of limestone paste and stick in their gobs. The betel nut and leaf make you salivate like a rabid dog and turn your spit red like blood, the lime gives you a slight high. It’s a bit of disgusting habit though. First of all, all public areas are covered in a layer of red spit that has been gobbed out by a variety of people. Secondly, you sometimes see lovely people only to open their mouths to reveal a stained set of rotting choppers from chewing paan all day.
See below for pictures of my tribal experience.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Dusting off my Salaam Aleikum
Fuck was I happy to leave Guwahati. I have to admit that I’ve become a bit of a right cocky cunt (if you’ll pardon my French): There I was exclaiming from the rooftops how much of a seasoned traveller and generally fantastic person I was ‘cos the heat in India didn’t bother me… Well, fuck me sideways… I’ve met my match! The heat during the day in Guwahati was like nothing I’ve experienced before. Combined with high levels of humidity, it meant that normal day-to-day life became a struggle of the highest proportions. Respiration during the day was like breathing with your face down in a bowl of scalding hot soup. The sweat would run down your neck in rivers and collect in little reservoirs under your arms and chest. The small of your back (see arsecrack) could have rivaled Niagara or Iguazu in volume. A shower would provide respite only for the amount of time that you were actually under the water. As soon as you step out of it, you’re a sweaty mess again instantly. Sleep at night was possible only under a dozen fans or else an AC unit. I had the former and managed a good night’s sleep.
Vikram, his cousin Nitin, Nitin’s wife Chin Chin and I all hopped in Nitin’s car and made the three hour journey from Guwahati to Shillong. At 1450m, Shillong is a nice respite from the heat of the lowlands. It’s the capital of the Indian state of Megalaya, bordering Bangladesh to the south and Assam to the north, and, due to its rolling hills, more temperate climate and history, is known as Scotland of the East.
For the past two days I’ve been driven around the city; taking in the various attractions and eating like a king. Vikram’s extended family are very hospitable and are really taking care of me. I’m going to stay here until the 21st of June, when my Indian visa runs out and it looks like there’ll be some exiting stuff on the cards. We’re going to a Jazz concert tomorrow evening and I’m going to look into doing some pot-holing in the caves around here and also visiting some waterfalls over the next few days. This evening, I had dinner with Vikrams friends. One of them works on a development project in a Kasai tribal village, Umsabhar, three hours from here and has invited me to come and stay a few days there, so that should be an interesting insight into the more remote rural areas of Megalaya.
So… the big question… what am I doing when my visa runs out? Well, I’ve decided (a while back actually) that there’s no point in continuing overland to South East Asia. First of all, I don’t have the money for it. I’ve already been away for over ten months now, two months over the initial eight months and my bank account will officially be at zero within the next month. Also, I’m ready to settle down again now for a while and am looking forward to working (and being able to live out of a wardrobe and cook my own food). And there’s no point rushing South East Asia: I’d like to give it some time and its due consideration, so look forward to exploring it in the near future.
I’m going to fly home to Ireland in August for a month or so. Then I will fly down to Melbourne to find a job there for a year or two. I already have my work visa, so I just need to find a way of getting some cash, and given the economic situation in Ireland and the fact that I’d look forward to working abroad again for a while, I figure Oz is as good a place as any.
So between now and August, I don’t have too many choices. I need to leave India on the 21st of June (visa runs out), so my choices are Nepal or Bangladesh. In July the monsoon will have hit with full force so it’s not the perfect season for travel in either country: Nepal’s famous treks will all be closed with leeches the main customers on any remaining open; Bangladesh’s deltas are infamous for flooding and its coast will no doubt be hammered by cyclones. However, I have to go somewhere.
Bangladesh is what I’m aiming for. I’ve decided that if I’m gonna witness the monsoon, I might as well do it in style. Also, the ‘road-less-travelled’ naturally draws me there and after the positive experiences of my time in Pakistan (Muslim country) and Calcutta/West Bengal (Bengali places), I figure it could be interesting.
I’ve heard on the grapevine that Irish citizens don’t need a tourist visa for Bangladesh. If this turns out to be true and if I can cross from one of the border crossings around here (there’s a border three hours from Shillong), then that’s where I’m headed. If it turns out to be a porky, that I actually DO need a visa, then I don’t have the time to make it to the consulate in Calcutta and will instead make my way to Nepal.
Either way, I’ll be away for another six to ten weeks and will be finish up my trip by the end of August by the latest (over a year from when I left Ireland for Istanbul).
Will update on Bangladeshi visa situation and plans for Shillong over the next few days.
Ur man in the Northeastern Subcontinent,
C.
Vikram, his cousin Nitin, Nitin’s wife Chin Chin and I all hopped in Nitin’s car and made the three hour journey from Guwahati to Shillong. At 1450m, Shillong is a nice respite from the heat of the lowlands. It’s the capital of the Indian state of Megalaya, bordering Bangladesh to the south and Assam to the north, and, due to its rolling hills, more temperate climate and history, is known as Scotland of the East.
For the past two days I’ve been driven around the city; taking in the various attractions and eating like a king. Vikram’s extended family are very hospitable and are really taking care of me. I’m going to stay here until the 21st of June, when my Indian visa runs out and it looks like there’ll be some exiting stuff on the cards. We’re going to a Jazz concert tomorrow evening and I’m going to look into doing some pot-holing in the caves around here and also visiting some waterfalls over the next few days. This evening, I had dinner with Vikrams friends. One of them works on a development project in a Kasai tribal village, Umsabhar, three hours from here and has invited me to come and stay a few days there, so that should be an interesting insight into the more remote rural areas of Megalaya.
So… the big question… what am I doing when my visa runs out? Well, I’ve decided (a while back actually) that there’s no point in continuing overland to South East Asia. First of all, I don’t have the money for it. I’ve already been away for over ten months now, two months over the initial eight months and my bank account will officially be at zero within the next month. Also, I’m ready to settle down again now for a while and am looking forward to working (and being able to live out of a wardrobe and cook my own food). And there’s no point rushing South East Asia: I’d like to give it some time and its due consideration, so look forward to exploring it in the near future.
I’m going to fly home to Ireland in August for a month or so. Then I will fly down to Melbourne to find a job there for a year or two. I already have my work visa, so I just need to find a way of getting some cash, and given the economic situation in Ireland and the fact that I’d look forward to working abroad again for a while, I figure Oz is as good a place as any.
So between now and August, I don’t have too many choices. I need to leave India on the 21st of June (visa runs out), so my choices are Nepal or Bangladesh. In July the monsoon will have hit with full force so it’s not the perfect season for travel in either country: Nepal’s famous treks will all be closed with leeches the main customers on any remaining open; Bangladesh’s deltas are infamous for flooding and its coast will no doubt be hammered by cyclones. However, I have to go somewhere.
Bangladesh is what I’m aiming for. I’ve decided that if I’m gonna witness the monsoon, I might as well do it in style. Also, the ‘road-less-travelled’ naturally draws me there and after the positive experiences of my time in Pakistan (Muslim country) and Calcutta/West Bengal (Bengali places), I figure it could be interesting.
I’ve heard on the grapevine that Irish citizens don’t need a tourist visa for Bangladesh. If this turns out to be true and if I can cross from one of the border crossings around here (there’s a border three hours from Shillong), then that’s where I’m headed. If it turns out to be a porky, that I actually DO need a visa, then I don’t have the time to make it to the consulate in Calcutta and will instead make my way to Nepal.
Either way, I’ll be away for another six to ten weeks and will be finish up my trip by the end of August by the latest (over a year from when I left Ireland for Istanbul).
Will update on Bangladeshi visa situation and plans for Shillong over the next few days.
Ur man in the Northeastern Subcontinent,
C.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Big-tuskers and one-horners
I’m in Guwahati, the biggest city in the Northeast of India and the capital of the state of Assam. It’s hot and it’s humid. The monsoon is playing with our minds… it hasn’t really started raining yet, but there is the occasional downpour. It’s getting late in the season and the city’s suffering a water shortage. Any day now, the heavens should open and the continuous reliable rains of the monsoon should cool the earth and lessen our infernal anguish, but so far, the clammy heat and pea-soup humidity prevails.
I’ve met up with my friend Vikram, whom I met in Bombay, and he’s been good enough to let me stay with his family here. We’re going to leave tomorrow morning to Shillong in the state of Megalaya, which is only a three hour taxi ride away. I’ve been assured that Shillong is a good deal higher and that the climate there is much more agreeable, which is good because neither Guwahati nor my wardrobe can sustain the fourteen-showers-and-three-shirts-a-day habit I’ve developed in the last 24 hours.
Vikram’s family has been a culinary delight and a welcome break from the samosa diet I’ve been on for the past while. For breakfast this morning we had chickpeas in a light tomatoe sauce, scrambled eggs with peas and onions and the Assamese equivalent to the ubiquitous Puri, which is a type of deep-fried bubble made from refined flour. For lunch we were invited to his uncles house where I gorged myself on multiple helpings of the most wonderfully light Dal (lentils), fish in a mustard and coconut milk sauce, fish cakes with spicy sweet olive chutney, lightly battered ochra, mixed vegetable and potato curry, followed off with a semolina desert with fruit and nuts; and ice cream. To aid our tummies in the monstrous challenge of digestion, we chewed betel nut and cardamom seeds.
The stopover in Jaldapara National Park in the West Bengali Hills was a fantastic experience. In the wild, we got to see rhinos, elephants, deer, ghul (the Indian version of bison), peacock and lots of other birds. We also got a close look at leopards in captivity. One day we were driving through the forest when a huge wild elephant (or a ‘big tusker’ as the guide called it) came out right onto the road behind us. It was magic (even though I nearly shit myself cos it looked like it was gonna charge us). The next morning, we rode out on elephants to look for the endangered Indian one-horned rhino and managed to find two fine specimens.
It was weird, I dunno if it was something unique to these two Rhino specimens, but they appeared to have some kind of issue with projectile defecation and urination. One of them went for a shit and it exploded out its rear end and landed about five feet away. The other one went for a piss and, again, it fountained up into the air nearly soaking an elephant-full of Injun tourists.
So I seem to be more of a novelty out here in the Northeast of the country. When I made my way from Jaldapara to Guwahati yesterday, I passed through the town of Cooch Behar, which is the setting for ‘Memoirs of a Maharani’, a book I read before I came away. I had this romantic notion of the town, which the book describes in detail, in reference to the princely states which existed before, during and (to some extent) after the Raj (British India). Anyway, it’s the arsehole of the universe; and they had clearly never seen a ‘whitey’ before so I caused a bit of a ruckus as I passed through the town. The Injuns have little sense of embarrassment about staring. There doesn’t seem to be the ‘rude’ taboo linked to it like we have at home. Most of the time I don’t mind, and I’m happy to stare back, or else to ignore, or else to smile and head-bobble, but sometimes… if the person looks particularly stupid… I’m liable to stop in my tracks, stare right back at them with my mouth open, tongue dug under my bottom lip and my eyes all googley in an attempt to illustrate to them how fucking ridiculous they look staring at me like a retard. Like any attempt at misguided social conditioning though, it falls flat on its face, with their gaze only turning even more moronic due to the increased peculiarity of engagement.
The staring reached its zenith this morning at the train station. I arrived at 3.30am and had to hang around until half six until my friend collected me. I was sitting outside the station minding my own business when I realised that ants had discovered the biscuits in my bag and had… well, ‘taken it over’ as such. I started dancing around like a lunatic trying to get the little formic fuckers out of my bag. Of course all I ended up achieving was getting myself covered the little bastards and then proceeded to attempt de-ant-ification through a series of jerks and slaps that must have made me look like I was suffering the advanced stages of dementia. Every station in India is besieged 24-7 by an a plethora of a people in one or other stage of transit, be it sleeping in the middle of a stairwell or arguing with rickshaw wallahs. And by the time I had managed to quell the invading armies, I looked up to find about four hundred people – stopped in their tracks - staring at me, smiling from ear to ear. I laughed and they all laughed too, it was actually pretty cool.
See below for pics of Indiana Jones-style jungle exploration in Jaldapara.
I promise the next post will be about what I’m going to do in the future, cos I’m coming to a crossroads pretty soon.
Ur man in Hindustan…
C.
I’ve met up with my friend Vikram, whom I met in Bombay, and he’s been good enough to let me stay with his family here. We’re going to leave tomorrow morning to Shillong in the state of Megalaya, which is only a three hour taxi ride away. I’ve been assured that Shillong is a good deal higher and that the climate there is much more agreeable, which is good because neither Guwahati nor my wardrobe can sustain the fourteen-showers-and-three-shirts-a-day habit I’ve developed in the last 24 hours.
Vikram’s family has been a culinary delight and a welcome break from the samosa diet I’ve been on for the past while. For breakfast this morning we had chickpeas in a light tomatoe sauce, scrambled eggs with peas and onions and the Assamese equivalent to the ubiquitous Puri, which is a type of deep-fried bubble made from refined flour. For lunch we were invited to his uncles house where I gorged myself on multiple helpings of the most wonderfully light Dal (lentils), fish in a mustard and coconut milk sauce, fish cakes with spicy sweet olive chutney, lightly battered ochra, mixed vegetable and potato curry, followed off with a semolina desert with fruit and nuts; and ice cream. To aid our tummies in the monstrous challenge of digestion, we chewed betel nut and cardamom seeds.
The stopover in Jaldapara National Park in the West Bengali Hills was a fantastic experience. In the wild, we got to see rhinos, elephants, deer, ghul (the Indian version of bison), peacock and lots of other birds. We also got a close look at leopards in captivity. One day we were driving through the forest when a huge wild elephant (or a ‘big tusker’ as the guide called it) came out right onto the road behind us. It was magic (even though I nearly shit myself cos it looked like it was gonna charge us). The next morning, we rode out on elephants to look for the endangered Indian one-horned rhino and managed to find two fine specimens.
It was weird, I dunno if it was something unique to these two Rhino specimens, but they appeared to have some kind of issue with projectile defecation and urination. One of them went for a shit and it exploded out its rear end and landed about five feet away. The other one went for a piss and, again, it fountained up into the air nearly soaking an elephant-full of Injun tourists.
So I seem to be more of a novelty out here in the Northeast of the country. When I made my way from Jaldapara to Guwahati yesterday, I passed through the town of Cooch Behar, which is the setting for ‘Memoirs of a Maharani’, a book I read before I came away. I had this romantic notion of the town, which the book describes in detail, in reference to the princely states which existed before, during and (to some extent) after the Raj (British India). Anyway, it’s the arsehole of the universe; and they had clearly never seen a ‘whitey’ before so I caused a bit of a ruckus as I passed through the town. The Injuns have little sense of embarrassment about staring. There doesn’t seem to be the ‘rude’ taboo linked to it like we have at home. Most of the time I don’t mind, and I’m happy to stare back, or else to ignore, or else to smile and head-bobble, but sometimes… if the person looks particularly stupid… I’m liable to stop in my tracks, stare right back at them with my mouth open, tongue dug under my bottom lip and my eyes all googley in an attempt to illustrate to them how fucking ridiculous they look staring at me like a retard. Like any attempt at misguided social conditioning though, it falls flat on its face, with their gaze only turning even more moronic due to the increased peculiarity of engagement.
The staring reached its zenith this morning at the train station. I arrived at 3.30am and had to hang around until half six until my friend collected me. I was sitting outside the station minding my own business when I realised that ants had discovered the biscuits in my bag and had… well, ‘taken it over’ as such. I started dancing around like a lunatic trying to get the little formic fuckers out of my bag. Of course all I ended up achieving was getting myself covered the little bastards and then proceeded to attempt de-ant-ification through a series of jerks and slaps that must have made me look like I was suffering the advanced stages of dementia. Every station in India is besieged 24-7 by an a plethora of a people in one or other stage of transit, be it sleeping in the middle of a stairwell or arguing with rickshaw wallahs. And by the time I had managed to quell the invading armies, I looked up to find about four hundred people – stopped in their tracks - staring at me, smiling from ear to ear. I laughed and they all laughed too, it was actually pretty cool.
See below for pics of Indiana Jones-style jungle exploration in Jaldapara.
I promise the next post will be about what I’m going to do in the future, cos I’m coming to a crossroads pretty soon.
Ur man in Hindustan…
C.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Back to guilty boozing
Just a quickie... After a final few drinks with my fellow trekkers last night, I left Gangtok this morning at nine o'clock. I got a five hour boneshaker jeep to Siliguri and from there caught a four hour local bus to where I am now.
So where am I now, I hear you ask... Well, I've left the mountains and come back down to the plains. Together with Siobhan, one of my fellow trackers, an Irish girl stuck in a Scottish accent, I've shacked up in a little place called Madarihat, in the West Bengali Hills. It's just outside the Jaldapara Wildlife Reserve, where tomorrow morning, we're due to mount elephants (in the transport sense of the word) to go rhino hunting. Well, OK... that's a bit of a porky. We're going rhino spotting, rather than hunting. (Siobhan would never agree to that, she's a vet and ridiculously animal friendly... although she's been regaling me with stories of how she castrates puppies for a living).
I'm gonna do some rhino spotting and forest trekking tomorrow and then I'll head down to Cooch Behar the next day to get a train to Guhati (in Assam) where I'll meet my friend Vikram from Mumbai and we'll boogey on down to his family's house in Shillong.
It's weird being back in the lowlands. Sikkim was very different from the rest of India. The government is quite well off up there, so it's very clean (plastic bags are forbidden) and the infrastructure is very good. Gangtok itself feels more like a town in the Alps than an Indian town. Also the people are more like the Nepali's or Tibetans (of which there are many) and not really like the Indians that much. There's lots of meat everywhere (even pork and beef) and it's got to be the only state where you don't feel like an absolute evil deviant if you want to have a drink. They have off-licenses galore and really nice bars and clubs where you can have a tipple, nothing at all like the dingy, men-only, dark backrooms of Indian bars, where you feel like you're waiting on a child prostitute instead of a beer. But it is a weird state, it was only incorporated into India in the 70's, before that it was a kinda of Indian protectrate. Click here for more Sikkim info.
Signing off for your correspondent back in the sweatshop of India.
C.
So where am I now, I hear you ask... Well, I've left the mountains and come back down to the plains. Together with Siobhan, one of my fellow trackers, an Irish girl stuck in a Scottish accent, I've shacked up in a little place called Madarihat, in the West Bengali Hills. It's just outside the Jaldapara Wildlife Reserve, where tomorrow morning, we're due to mount elephants (in the transport sense of the word) to go rhino hunting. Well, OK... that's a bit of a porky. We're going rhino spotting, rather than hunting. (Siobhan would never agree to that, she's a vet and ridiculously animal friendly... although she's been regaling me with stories of how she castrates puppies for a living).
I'm gonna do some rhino spotting and forest trekking tomorrow and then I'll head down to Cooch Behar the next day to get a train to Guhati (in Assam) where I'll meet my friend Vikram from Mumbai and we'll boogey on down to his family's house in Shillong.
It's weird being back in the lowlands. Sikkim was very different from the rest of India. The government is quite well off up there, so it's very clean (plastic bags are forbidden) and the infrastructure is very good. Gangtok itself feels more like a town in the Alps than an Indian town. Also the people are more like the Nepali's or Tibetans (of which there are many) and not really like the Indians that much. There's lots of meat everywhere (even pork and beef) and it's got to be the only state where you don't feel like an absolute evil deviant if you want to have a drink. They have off-licenses galore and really nice bars and clubs where you can have a tipple, nothing at all like the dingy, men-only, dark backrooms of Indian bars, where you feel like you're waiting on a child prostitute instead of a beer. But it is a weird state, it was only incorporated into India in the 70's, before that it was a kinda of Indian protectrate. Click here for more Sikkim info.
Signing off for your correspondent back in the sweatshop of India.
C.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Kachmanjunga and Gochala Pass
I’m back… I expected to be absolutely fuckarooed, but I’m not actually that bad. I had an absolutely brilliant trek, it was very exiting and adventurous! Considering that it’s the basecamp for the worlds third highest mountain, it’s quite an undeveloped trek and doesn’t compare with (the Nepalese) Everest or Annapurna in that regard. At one point, the weather looked to be disallowing our progress (we caught the arse-end of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal), but just as we were getting ready to abandon ship and head for the lowlands, it broke and opened up a window for us to make it to the top: Gochela Pass.
Days 1 and 2 were spent hiking up trough the lush Sikkimese forests. They were fairly easy days with no more than three hours trekking each day. I had left Yuksom (the starting point at 1800m) with an Israeli girl and a British guy, as well as a guide, a cook, three porters and three dzo’s (a mixed breed of a yak and a cow).
Day 3 saw us arrive at the Zongri trekking hut, at 4000m, when the worst of the weather set in. We arrived to find a group of two Aussies, two Kiwis, two South Africans and another Irish girl. The driving rain meant that we were unable to leave the trekking hut for a good 36 hours. Luckily for me, this constituted an acclimatization day in my itinerary (or a day of rest), when I hadn’t planned to move anyway. For the others, it meant a day was shorn off the end of their trek.
On the morning of Day 5, we awoke bright and early to find the sun shining and the mountains inviting our ascent. We lost one Kiwi, the Israeli girl and the British guy (who had only planned to come as far as Zongri anyway) and the remaining seven of us started up the mountain to the Thangsing trekking hut, set in beautiful meadows at the bottom of an awesome glacial valley. We went to bed early to prepare for our ascent to the Gochela pass the next morning. This is the valley we stayed in in Thangsing.
After a 1.30am breakfast of porridge, we started up the valley under the cover of a starlit night. By 5.00am it was bright and we had reached the first viewpoint, a mountaintop overlooking a glacial moraine stretching up to the Gochala pass. It was cold… really fucking cold! We could see that there was snow on the pass and its access ridges (the rain we experienced lower down had been snow up here). Many of us weren’t really kitted out for snow and were already pretty cold, so only one of the Kiwi guys, the other Irish girl and myself continued (yes, the Irish are hardy fuckers…!).
After a near-vertical descent, we traipsed across a dry lake bounded by Mt. Pandim to the east and huge glacial ridge to the west. After the lake, we reached the snowline, but the snow was still cold and concrete-like so at first it was easy to walk on. We moved up the access ridge, but the trail was super narrow and wasn’t one that was meant for snow and we quickly found ourselves moving across the face of a very high steep ridge standing on extraordinarily icy snow (needless to say, we didn’t have crampons or any of the kit one might have appreciated in such a scenario). I was roaring at the guide that “this just isn’t fucking safe, you fucking gobshite”. One slip and… well, who likes to think about that. The trail was traversing the ridge, rising slowly towards the top, but at one point it became so steep that we decided to ‘go vertical’ and make a break for the top of the ridge. Using sticks and our boots we hacked footholds into the snow and climbed the ridge like a ladder.
When we got to the top of the ridge, I was fucking ecstatic that we hadn’t died and was… ahem… “marginally flipping out” at the guide that he had brought us that way. (He later admitted he had never reached the pass in snow). We decided to come back down from the pass by a different route, but first we had to make our way along the top of the ridge to the pass.
This was not as easy as it sounds. As described the ridge was about 300m high, and had steep slopes of icy snow. As we walked along it, every now and then, there would be a fucking ginormous boulder in our way. Some of these we could climb over, but others we had to walk around, meaning we had to go onto the sleek, icy face of the ridge, either to the east or the west and somehow manipulate ourselves around a boulder. We had about four or five dodgy boulders to circumvent, but with teamwork and resolve, we did a good job and arrived at the pass at about 8.00am, six hours after having left camp and just as the sun was coming over the mountaintops.
In fairness, the view we were rewarded with was nothing less than spectacular. Although the view of Kangchenjunga, the worlds third highest mountain, was somewhat underwhelming due to its distance (20km to the north), it formed a nice backdrop to things. And the view back on the valley, its glacial ridge dividing a lower dry lake/desert from a higher (startlingly blue) lake and the surrounding 6-7000m peaks was absolutely gobsmackingly beautiful.
OK, this entry is way too fucking long, so basically over days 7 to 9, I came back down the mountain again and am now in Gangtok, the capital of the Indian state of Sikkim.
See below for pics…
Peace out,
Ur man in the mountains…
Days 1 and 2 were spent hiking up trough the lush Sikkimese forests. They were fairly easy days with no more than three hours trekking each day. I had left Yuksom (the starting point at 1800m) with an Israeli girl and a British guy, as well as a guide, a cook, three porters and three dzo’s (a mixed breed of a yak and a cow).
Day 3 saw us arrive at the Zongri trekking hut, at 4000m, when the worst of the weather set in. We arrived to find a group of two Aussies, two Kiwis, two South Africans and another Irish girl. The driving rain meant that we were unable to leave the trekking hut for a good 36 hours. Luckily for me, this constituted an acclimatization day in my itinerary (or a day of rest), when I hadn’t planned to move anyway. For the others, it meant a day was shorn off the end of their trek.
On the morning of Day 5, we awoke bright and early to find the sun shining and the mountains inviting our ascent. We lost one Kiwi, the Israeli girl and the British guy (who had only planned to come as far as Zongri anyway) and the remaining seven of us started up the mountain to the Thangsing trekking hut, set in beautiful meadows at the bottom of an awesome glacial valley. We went to bed early to prepare for our ascent to the Gochela pass the next morning. This is the valley we stayed in in Thangsing.
After a 1.30am breakfast of porridge, we started up the valley under the cover of a starlit night. By 5.00am it was bright and we had reached the first viewpoint, a mountaintop overlooking a glacial moraine stretching up to the Gochala pass. It was cold… really fucking cold! We could see that there was snow on the pass and its access ridges (the rain we experienced lower down had been snow up here). Many of us weren’t really kitted out for snow and were already pretty cold, so only one of the Kiwi guys, the other Irish girl and myself continued (yes, the Irish are hardy fuckers…!).
After a near-vertical descent, we traipsed across a dry lake bounded by Mt. Pandim to the east and huge glacial ridge to the west. After the lake, we reached the snowline, but the snow was still cold and concrete-like so at first it was easy to walk on. We moved up the access ridge, but the trail was super narrow and wasn’t one that was meant for snow and we quickly found ourselves moving across the face of a very high steep ridge standing on extraordinarily icy snow (needless to say, we didn’t have crampons or any of the kit one might have appreciated in such a scenario). I was roaring at the guide that “this just isn’t fucking safe, you fucking gobshite”. One slip and… well, who likes to think about that. The trail was traversing the ridge, rising slowly towards the top, but at one point it became so steep that we decided to ‘go vertical’ and make a break for the top of the ridge. Using sticks and our boots we hacked footholds into the snow and climbed the ridge like a ladder.
When we got to the top of the ridge, I was fucking ecstatic that we hadn’t died and was… ahem… “marginally flipping out” at the guide that he had brought us that way. (He later admitted he had never reached the pass in snow). We decided to come back down from the pass by a different route, but first we had to make our way along the top of the ridge to the pass.
This was not as easy as it sounds. As described the ridge was about 300m high, and had steep slopes of icy snow. As we walked along it, every now and then, there would be a fucking ginormous boulder in our way. Some of these we could climb over, but others we had to walk around, meaning we had to go onto the sleek, icy face of the ridge, either to the east or the west and somehow manipulate ourselves around a boulder. We had about four or five dodgy boulders to circumvent, but with teamwork and resolve, we did a good job and arrived at the pass at about 8.00am, six hours after having left camp and just as the sun was coming over the mountaintops.
In fairness, the view we were rewarded with was nothing less than spectacular. Although the view of Kangchenjunga, the worlds third highest mountain, was somewhat underwhelming due to its distance (20km to the north), it formed a nice backdrop to things. And the view back on the valley, its glacial ridge dividing a lower dry lake/desert from a higher (startlingly blue) lake and the surrounding 6-7000m peaks was absolutely gobsmackingly beautiful.
OK, this entry is way too fucking long, so basically over days 7 to 9, I came back down the mountain again and am now in Gangtok, the capital of the Indian state of Sikkim.
See below for pics…
Peace out,
Ur man in the mountains…
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Goin' off the air... temporarily!
I've recovered now from my bout of negativity. I still don't think Darjeeling is so great, but it's surrounding landscape is quite nice and I'm feeling slightly better about it. We went rafting yesterday, which, although not quite as mental as previous rafting experience in Colombia (you can read about that here), was quite cool the same. I've thrown in some random pics of Darjeeling and rafting below.
Tomorrow, I'm starting out on a ten-day trek to the base camp of Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. It's supposed to be quite challenging and I haven't ever done a trek of ten days, so I'm slightly nervous about it. Also, it's the first time that I'll be trekking at sustained altitudes, with this trek bringing me up to the 5000m mark. See below for the itinerary.
So I'm out of radio contact for the next ten days but will hopefully have something mildly interesting to say upon my return on the 2nd of June.
B gud people and I'll be smellin' ya later (although after ten days without showers, it may be that you'll be smellin' me)
C.
GOECHALA TREKKING
(KANCHENDZONGA BASE - THIRD HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN THE WORLD)
DAY 01
YUKSOM TO SACHEN. (1785M/5400FT) (8 KM, 5 TO 6 HRS.)
IT IS A GRADUALCLIMB. STAY AT SACHEN FOR THE NIGHT.
DAY 02
SACHEN TO TSHOKA. (3000M/9840FT) (9 KM, 6 HRS.)
THIS WILL BE A STEEP CLIMB .WE WILL SPEND OUR NIGHT AT TSHOKA, SURROUNDED BY SHEPHERD HUTS.
DAY 03
TSHOKA TO DZONGRI (4030M/13218 FT) (10 KMS, 5 TO 6 HRS.)
ON THIS DAY THE TRAIL PASSES THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF TSHOKA AND CONTINUES TO CLIMB NORTH THROUGH THE FOREST OF RHODEDENDRON TO THE ALP OF PHEDANG (3650 M) TAKING AROUND 03 HRS TO COMPLETE THE ASENT. CONTINUE FURTHER TOWARDS DZONGRI. ON ARRIVAL SET CAMP SIDE FOR OVER NIGHT STAY.
DAY 04
DZONGRI
THIS DAY IS FOR REST AND ACCLIMATISATION. ON THIS DAY ONE CAN SAVOUR VIEWS OF THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS BY CLIMBING UP TO DZONGRI TOP WITH A PANOROMIC VIEW OF KABRO (7353M), RATHONG (6678M), MT. KANCHEN DZONGA (8848M), KOKTHANG (6147M), PANDIM (6691M) AND NORSING (5825M) TOWARDS THE WEST. THE SINGHILILA RIDGE WHICH SEPARETES SIKKIM FROM NEPAL CAN ALSO BE SEEN. OVERNIGHT IN TENT.
DAY 05
DZONGRI TO THANGSING (3800M/12464FT) (7 KMS, 4 TO 5 HRS)
THE TRAIL FROM DZONGRI CONTINUES EAST ALONG THE RIGHT BACK OF THE RIVER. AFTER CRESTING THE HILL, THE PATH DROPS INTO THE VALLY AND THEN CROSSES A BRIDGE OVER THE PREKCHU RIVER. AN HOURS CLIMB BRINGS YOU FROM THE BRIDGE TO THANGSING (3800M), LOCATED ON THE SLOPES OF MT PANDIM. OVER NIGHT IN TENT/HUT.
DAY 06
THANGSING TO SUMITE LAKE/ LAMUNE (4500M/14760 FT) (7KMS 3 TO 4 HRS)
THIS IS A HIGH ALTITUDE MODERATE WALK. THE TRAIL FROM THANGSING CLIMBS GENTLY NORTH AND FOLLOWS A STREAM AND ALPINE MEADOWS. ABOUT AN HOUR ABOVE THANGSING WE REACH ONGLATHANG, WITH A SUPERB VIEW OF THE SOUTH FACE OF MT. KANCHENDZONGA. IN ORDER TO CAPTURE CLEAR VIEWS ONE HAS TO REACH ONGLATHANG EARLY. THE TRAIL THEN SKIRTS THROUGH A SERIES OF GLACIAL MORAINES BEFORE CROSSING OVER MEADOWS AGAIN, AND ARRIVES AT THE EMERALD LAKE AT SUMITE. OVERNIGHT IN TENT.
DAY 07
SUMITE LAKE TO GOCHALA (5000M-16406FIT)
THE CLIMB TO GOCHALA BEGINS FOR ABOUT HALF AN HOUR WITH A GENTLE GRADIENT EASTWARDS. THEN A STEEP ASCENT STARTS; THE TRAIL FOLLOWS THE GLACIAL MORAINE NORTH-EAST AND THEN DROPS TO A DRY LAKE AT ZEMATHANG. A TOUGH SCRAMBLE OVER ROCKS AND BOULDERS RISING 400 METRES WILL BRING US TO THE TOP OF THE GOCHALA PASS. THE PASS IS FORMED BY A DEPRESSION BETWEEN THE SPURS OF MT PANDIM AND MT KABRU. IT OVERLOOKS THE TALUNG VALLEY AND COMMANDS A VERY IMPRESSIVE VIEW OF THE SOUTH FACE OF MT KANCHENDZONGA. IN THE AFTERNOON WE RETURN TO THANGSING VIA SUMETI LAKE. OVERNIGHT IN TENTS/HUTS AT THANGSING.
DAY 08
THANGSING TO LAMPHOKRI (4200M/13800FT) (7KMS, 6 TO 7 HRS)
THANGSING TO LAMPHOKRI EXCURSION TO SEE THE HIGH ALTITUDE HOLI LAKE. RETURN TO THANGSING AND OVERNIGHT IN TENTS/HUTS.
DAY 09 THANGSING TO TSHOKA VIA PHEDANG (11KMS, 7 TO 8 HRS)
OVERNIGHT AT TSHOKA IN TENTS.
DAY 10 TSHOKA TO YUKSOM (17 KMS, 7 TO 8 HRS)
RETRACE STEPS TOWORDS YUKSOM ON THE FINAL DAY OF THE TREK.THE GOING IS EASIER AS THE PATH IS MAINLY DOWNHILL. ARRIVE BACK IN YUKSOM
View Goecha La Trek in a larger map
Photos of Darjeeling
Tomorrow, I'm starting out on a ten-day trek to the base camp of Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. It's supposed to be quite challenging and I haven't ever done a trek of ten days, so I'm slightly nervous about it. Also, it's the first time that I'll be trekking at sustained altitudes, with this trek bringing me up to the 5000m mark. See below for the itinerary.
So I'm out of radio contact for the next ten days but will hopefully have something mildly interesting to say upon my return on the 2nd of June.
B gud people and I'll be smellin' ya later (although after ten days without showers, it may be that you'll be smellin' me)
C.
GOECHALA TREKKING
(KANCHENDZONGA BASE - THIRD HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN THE WORLD)
DAY 01
YUKSOM TO SACHEN. (1785M/5400FT) (8 KM, 5 TO 6 HRS.)
IT IS A GRADUALCLIMB. STAY AT SACHEN FOR THE NIGHT.
DAY 02
SACHEN TO TSHOKA. (3000M/9840FT) (9 KM, 6 HRS.)
THIS WILL BE A STEEP CLIMB .WE WILL SPEND OUR NIGHT AT TSHOKA, SURROUNDED BY SHEPHERD HUTS.
DAY 03
TSHOKA TO DZONGRI (4030M/13218 FT) (10 KMS, 5 TO 6 HRS.)
ON THIS DAY THE TRAIL PASSES THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF TSHOKA AND CONTINUES TO CLIMB NORTH THROUGH THE FOREST OF RHODEDENDRON TO THE ALP OF PHEDANG (3650 M) TAKING AROUND 03 HRS TO COMPLETE THE ASENT. CONTINUE FURTHER TOWARDS DZONGRI. ON ARRIVAL SET CAMP SIDE FOR OVER NIGHT STAY.
DAY 04
DZONGRI
THIS DAY IS FOR REST AND ACCLIMATISATION. ON THIS DAY ONE CAN SAVOUR VIEWS OF THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS BY CLIMBING UP TO DZONGRI TOP WITH A PANOROMIC VIEW OF KABRO (7353M), RATHONG (6678M), MT. KANCHEN DZONGA (8848M), KOKTHANG (6147M), PANDIM (6691M) AND NORSING (5825M) TOWARDS THE WEST. THE SINGHILILA RIDGE WHICH SEPARETES SIKKIM FROM NEPAL CAN ALSO BE SEEN. OVERNIGHT IN TENT.
DAY 05
DZONGRI TO THANGSING (3800M/12464FT) (7 KMS, 4 TO 5 HRS)
THE TRAIL FROM DZONGRI CONTINUES EAST ALONG THE RIGHT BACK OF THE RIVER. AFTER CRESTING THE HILL, THE PATH DROPS INTO THE VALLY AND THEN CROSSES A BRIDGE OVER THE PREKCHU RIVER. AN HOURS CLIMB BRINGS YOU FROM THE BRIDGE TO THANGSING (3800M), LOCATED ON THE SLOPES OF MT PANDIM. OVER NIGHT IN TENT/HUT.
DAY 06
THANGSING TO SUMITE LAKE/ LAMUNE (4500M/14760 FT) (7KMS 3 TO 4 HRS)
THIS IS A HIGH ALTITUDE MODERATE WALK. THE TRAIL FROM THANGSING CLIMBS GENTLY NORTH AND FOLLOWS A STREAM AND ALPINE MEADOWS. ABOUT AN HOUR ABOVE THANGSING WE REACH ONGLATHANG, WITH A SUPERB VIEW OF THE SOUTH FACE OF MT. KANCHENDZONGA. IN ORDER TO CAPTURE CLEAR VIEWS ONE HAS TO REACH ONGLATHANG EARLY. THE TRAIL THEN SKIRTS THROUGH A SERIES OF GLACIAL MORAINES BEFORE CROSSING OVER MEADOWS AGAIN, AND ARRIVES AT THE EMERALD LAKE AT SUMITE. OVERNIGHT IN TENT.
DAY 07
SUMITE LAKE TO GOCHALA (5000M-16406FIT)
THE CLIMB TO GOCHALA BEGINS FOR ABOUT HALF AN HOUR WITH A GENTLE GRADIENT EASTWARDS. THEN A STEEP ASCENT STARTS; THE TRAIL FOLLOWS THE GLACIAL MORAINE NORTH-EAST AND THEN DROPS TO A DRY LAKE AT ZEMATHANG. A TOUGH SCRAMBLE OVER ROCKS AND BOULDERS RISING 400 METRES WILL BRING US TO THE TOP OF THE GOCHALA PASS. THE PASS IS FORMED BY A DEPRESSION BETWEEN THE SPURS OF MT PANDIM AND MT KABRU. IT OVERLOOKS THE TALUNG VALLEY AND COMMANDS A VERY IMPRESSIVE VIEW OF THE SOUTH FACE OF MT KANCHENDZONGA. IN THE AFTERNOON WE RETURN TO THANGSING VIA SUMETI LAKE. OVERNIGHT IN TENTS/HUTS AT THANGSING.
DAY 08
THANGSING TO LAMPHOKRI (4200M/13800FT) (7KMS, 6 TO 7 HRS)
THANGSING TO LAMPHOKRI EXCURSION TO SEE THE HIGH ALTITUDE HOLI LAKE. RETURN TO THANGSING AND OVERNIGHT IN TENTS/HUTS.
DAY 09 THANGSING TO TSHOKA VIA PHEDANG (11KMS, 7 TO 8 HRS)
OVERNIGHT AT TSHOKA IN TENTS.
DAY 10 TSHOKA TO YUKSOM (17 KMS, 7 TO 8 HRS)
RETRACE STEPS TOWORDS YUKSOM ON THE FINAL DAY OF THE TREK.THE GOING IS EASIER AS THE PATH IS MAINLY DOWNHILL. ARRIVE BACK IN YUKSOM
View Goecha La Trek in a larger map
Photos of Darjeeling
Monday, May 18, 2009
Limited Darjeeling
Some of you may be surprised to learn that Darjeeling, despite the tea-sipping, colonial-balcony-dwelling romantic imagery it ushers to mind, is in actual fact, a bit of a shithole!
As a town, it suffers from colossal over-development, its windy roads dominated by honking jeeps stuck in eternal jams. Since I’ve arrived here, it’s more or less pissed rain non-stop, yet the town suffers a shortage of water the likes of which I’ve never witnessed before. This water shortage manifests itself (perhaps not surprisingly) in an absolute lack of water. All toilets are closed, with taps in my own bathroom not working for nine out of ten attempts; laundry prices are extortionate and the smell of undiluted effluent invades your olfactory senses.
As I mentioned, my time here has been marred by bad weather. Not only has it been wet, but it’s been quite cold as well (the town is at an altitude of 2100m). Coming from the heat of the lowlands, this has been quite a shock to the system, and I’ve had to invest in winter wollies and wear shoes and socks for the first time in a while. The mountains have been covered in mist, meaning that the only peaks visible are those of the mountains of rubbish which line the pathways.
I suppose I’m not in the best of humour either, and perhaps this is tainting my experience here. It’s now a certainty that any exposure to air conditioning leaves me with a cold. My most recent case of the snuffles was contracted on the 3AC train trip from Varanasi, and now I’m leaving a trail of snot behind me wherever I go and generally feeling like shit.
Also, I appear to have arrived here at some kind of peak tourist season. On the first night of my arrival, I had to spend an hour and a half traipsing around the town looking for a hotel with an empty room. This is unheard of during my travels so far, with any traipsing just being a question of finding a nice room at the right price. But here, I’ve had to settle for what must be the shittest room in the history of the hospitality industry. And what’s more, I’m paying through the (runny) nose for the privilege of ‘a view’, although you can’t see your hand in front of your face most of the time. There are marauding hordes of Indian tourists; families with the loudest, most obnoxious little shits as children. How I haven’t thrown one of the little bastards off the side of the mountain yet, I don’t know. It must be a sign of my deep rooted altruism.
This irritability extends also to bureaucracy and a phenomenon I have elegantly termed “fucking retarded Indian gobshite syndrome”. I swear to God, how I haven’t murdered someone here is beyond me. Myself and a friend took this toy train thingy the other day (a kind of silly little tourist steam driven thingy) to see a town a bit down the road. We had shelled out for first class tickets for the hour long journey, for shits and giggles. When we went to the (toy-) train station, which has a grand total of one departure per day, it took us about an hour to find the train, carriage and seats we had booked. We must have asked all 100 people who worked in the station, from station manager to ticket clerk to luggage carrier and got 100 different responses. I had to give my friend the ticket and charge him with solving the problem as I was going to explode.
This one clerk guy we showed our ticket to, just generally pointed into the ether with his finger… I fucking snapped and in the middle of the railway station I started jumping around pointing everywhere with my eyes crossed and my tongue hanging out, trying to communicate to him that I considered his intellect on a par with that of the iron girding lining the tracks.
My only solace in this time of snuffly-nose induced misery is that I’m really enjoying Rushdie’s Midnight Children. The protagonist also has a perma-cold, so at least I can identify.
I got my permit for Sikkim today. On a positive note, it only took an hour and was a surprisingly easy bureaucratic hurdle. Sikkim is a small Indian state sandwiched between Nepal and Bhutan so I’m gonna head up there in the next day or two when I start feeling better. Maybe Darjeeling will unveil some hidden beauty in the meantime, lets wait and see.
Signing off for your correspondent with a big red nose…
As a town, it suffers from colossal over-development, its windy roads dominated by honking jeeps stuck in eternal jams. Since I’ve arrived here, it’s more or less pissed rain non-stop, yet the town suffers a shortage of water the likes of which I’ve never witnessed before. This water shortage manifests itself (perhaps not surprisingly) in an absolute lack of water. All toilets are closed, with taps in my own bathroom not working for nine out of ten attempts; laundry prices are extortionate and the smell of undiluted effluent invades your olfactory senses.
As I mentioned, my time here has been marred by bad weather. Not only has it been wet, but it’s been quite cold as well (the town is at an altitude of 2100m). Coming from the heat of the lowlands, this has been quite a shock to the system, and I’ve had to invest in winter wollies and wear shoes and socks for the first time in a while. The mountains have been covered in mist, meaning that the only peaks visible are those of the mountains of rubbish which line the pathways.
I suppose I’m not in the best of humour either, and perhaps this is tainting my experience here. It’s now a certainty that any exposure to air conditioning leaves me with a cold. My most recent case of the snuffles was contracted on the 3AC train trip from Varanasi, and now I’m leaving a trail of snot behind me wherever I go and generally feeling like shit.
Also, I appear to have arrived here at some kind of peak tourist season. On the first night of my arrival, I had to spend an hour and a half traipsing around the town looking for a hotel with an empty room. This is unheard of during my travels so far, with any traipsing just being a question of finding a nice room at the right price. But here, I’ve had to settle for what must be the shittest room in the history of the hospitality industry. And what’s more, I’m paying through the (runny) nose for the privilege of ‘a view’, although you can’t see your hand in front of your face most of the time. There are marauding hordes of Indian tourists; families with the loudest, most obnoxious little shits as children. How I haven’t thrown one of the little bastards off the side of the mountain yet, I don’t know. It must be a sign of my deep rooted altruism.
This irritability extends also to bureaucracy and a phenomenon I have elegantly termed “fucking retarded Indian gobshite syndrome”. I swear to God, how I haven’t murdered someone here is beyond me. Myself and a friend took this toy train thingy the other day (a kind of silly little tourist steam driven thingy) to see a town a bit down the road. We had shelled out for first class tickets for the hour long journey, for shits and giggles. When we went to the (toy-) train station, which has a grand total of one departure per day, it took us about an hour to find the train, carriage and seats we had booked. We must have asked all 100 people who worked in the station, from station manager to ticket clerk to luggage carrier and got 100 different responses. I had to give my friend the ticket and charge him with solving the problem as I was going to explode.
This one clerk guy we showed our ticket to, just generally pointed into the ether with his finger… I fucking snapped and in the middle of the railway station I started jumping around pointing everywhere with my eyes crossed and my tongue hanging out, trying to communicate to him that I considered his intellect on a par with that of the iron girding lining the tracks.
My only solace in this time of snuffly-nose induced misery is that I’m really enjoying Rushdie’s Midnight Children. The protagonist also has a perma-cold, so at least I can identify.
I got my permit for Sikkim today. On a positive note, it only took an hour and was a surprisingly easy bureaucratic hurdle. Sikkim is a small Indian state sandwiched between Nepal and Bhutan so I’m gonna head up there in the next day or two when I start feeling better. Maybe Darjeeling will unveil some hidden beauty in the meantime, lets wait and see.
Signing off for your correspondent with a big red nose…
Friday, May 15, 2009
The smell of charred human flesh
Would you be very surprised if I told you I was on a train… The Mahananda Express picked me up in Mughal Sarai, just outside Varanasi, last night at midnight. It had come from Delhi and was packed with people. I had to eject someone from my upper berth before I could claim it, but that’s fairly standard practice. The family in my compartment appear to be moving all their earthly belongings with them, so there’s no room for me anywhere except in my upper berth haven.
The trip to Mughal Sarai from Varanasi was knicker-gripping. I got a very enthusiastic auto-wallah who immediately gave me a fair price, despite all his colleagues being upset with him for not ripping off the gora. He proceeded to make the 1 hour journey in about 35 minutes, driving at breakneck speed, although he was a good driver. We crashed thrice (the Injuns still use that term); once into a cycle-rickshaw, once into a cyclist, once into an old man. Although my driver was at fault each time, he insisted on further molesting the victims with a torrent of abuse… the cyclist was even honoured with the term behenchod, the only Hindi swearword that I’ve learned to recognize: sisterfucker!
I arrived back in Delhi from Kashmir to a wedding that my friend Vikram had invited me too. It was a pretty opulent affair. Being part of the groom’s side of things, we had to dance in front of his white horse for about three hours, the objective being to slow down his nuptials as he made his way towards his bride. Eventually the horse reached the bridal party and after some mock-arguments as to whether the groom was to be permitted entrance and as to whether his dowry had been sufficient, he finally made his way into a decorated army mess (his dad was a Major) where he sat on a throne-for-two awaiting his beloved (it was not an arranged marriage, it was a love marriage… ain’t that just purty!). Eventually the bride was led in with her family holding a silk sheet over her head. She was presented to her husband and took her seat beside him. Photos ensued, with every permutation and combination of relatives besieging the happy couple. The bride looked like she was going to faint. After that, the couple moved outside where the religious rites were read by an aging saddhu under a silk canopy. We left before this as the whole thing went on for… pardon my French… fuckin’ ages. Excellent food was served in a beautifully lit and immaculately decorated garden patio during all this, and the six-hundred odd guests knocked back juices and multicoloured drinks by the gallon. It was a great night, but I was banjaxed by the time I hit the hay.
After that I had a good few days in Delhi. I met up with some friends and ate like a king. Between Indian fast food in Neruli’s on CP, fish in Blanco’s at Khan Market, Mughal style legs of lamb at Karim’s in Old Delhi or mango milkshakes in Gianni’s, I generally spent the week stuffing my face.
Then I overnighttrained it to Varanasi, one of the oldest permanently populated cities in the world, and sacred pilgrimage place for Hindus and Buddhists alike. I’m happy to inform you that I’m now clean, not clean in the sanitary sense (I’m far from that after twelve hours of train), but clean in the spiritual sense rather. Varanasi is on the Ganges river (Ganga) and a quick dip is supposed to clean your soul and absolve your sin. When I say it was a quick dip though, I mean it was lightning. The river is fairly manky. When you walk along the ghats at the river, some of them are for swimming in and some are burning ghats, where bodies are burned in Hindu funeral rites. So if you’re unlucky, you can have a half charred human foot or hand float past you while you’re bathing. I didn’t give it the time for that. See below for some pics of Delhi and Varanasi.
The Mahananda Express is running four hours late. It’s supposed to be arriving into New Jalpaiguri now (1pm), but it’s gonna be more like 5pm. Then I’ll jump onto the ‘toy train’ which will bring me up to Darjeeling, ex-hillstation of the Brit’s and tea plantation zone. The weather in Darjeeling should be nice, compared with the heat of Delhi or Varanasi. Everyone warned me that the heat would be unbearable and although it has been hot, with temperatures wavering around the 40 degree mark, it’s been fair from unbearable. You wouldn’t want to be running a marathon in a plastic bag in the midday sun, but then again, you wouldn’t want to be doing that anyway. You find yourself unconsciously jumping sunny hurdles between shadowed straights during the day. At night, you can sleep well as long as you have a decent fan above you (one that isn’t too loud; first thing to check in a new room!).
In other news, I’ve gotten fed up of being told what to do and what not to do by random Injuns with or without a uniform. There’s mad security everywhere here, in cinemas, train stations, shopping malls and just about anywhere where wealthy Indians could possibly congregate. Every shop has its own private army and there are security ‘systems’ in place everywhere. I emphasise systems, because none of them actually work. You’ll have fifteen armed guards and four metal detectors supervising and controlling the entrance to the train station, frisking people, going through bags etc. and then ten feet away someone will have left another door open through which people will be filing into the station unperturbed. Every corner you turn, there’s some little wallah with a private security uniform on telling you that you can’t walk here (even though the entire population of India could be walking in front of you). If you sit down in a train station, you can be assured someone with stripes on their arm will ask you to move. So I’ve given up, I’ve now added security men to the growing list of people I ignore in India (beggars, touts, policemen, salesmen, religious people etc.). Not surprisingly, nothing has actually changed. If I just ignore them, then they (like everyone else) will eventually go away and leave me alone… hihihi. Oh, the irony… as I write this a man approached attempting with body language to lay claim to my seat. I showed him my ticket (not letting him touch it, just see it) and now I’m happily ignoring him while he’s rattling on about something.
It sounds like I’m a bastard, but honestly, I’m not! You’ve got to stand up for yourself here, or you’ll be walked all over. Even in terms of safeguarding your private space and sanity of mind, you have to assert yourself. If you engaged with everyone who tried to engage you in conversation, you’d actually never move off the spot.
Ur man on his way to the mountains again…
The trip to Mughal Sarai from Varanasi was knicker-gripping. I got a very enthusiastic auto-wallah who immediately gave me a fair price, despite all his colleagues being upset with him for not ripping off the gora. He proceeded to make the 1 hour journey in about 35 minutes, driving at breakneck speed, although he was a good driver. We crashed thrice (the Injuns still use that term); once into a cycle-rickshaw, once into a cyclist, once into an old man. Although my driver was at fault each time, he insisted on further molesting the victims with a torrent of abuse… the cyclist was even honoured with the term behenchod, the only Hindi swearword that I’ve learned to recognize: sisterfucker!
I arrived back in Delhi from Kashmir to a wedding that my friend Vikram had invited me too. It was a pretty opulent affair. Being part of the groom’s side of things, we had to dance in front of his white horse for about three hours, the objective being to slow down his nuptials as he made his way towards his bride. Eventually the horse reached the bridal party and after some mock-arguments as to whether the groom was to be permitted entrance and as to whether his dowry had been sufficient, he finally made his way into a decorated army mess (his dad was a Major) where he sat on a throne-for-two awaiting his beloved (it was not an arranged marriage, it was a love marriage… ain’t that just purty!). Eventually the bride was led in with her family holding a silk sheet over her head. She was presented to her husband and took her seat beside him. Photos ensued, with every permutation and combination of relatives besieging the happy couple. The bride looked like she was going to faint. After that, the couple moved outside where the religious rites were read by an aging saddhu under a silk canopy. We left before this as the whole thing went on for… pardon my French… fuckin’ ages. Excellent food was served in a beautifully lit and immaculately decorated garden patio during all this, and the six-hundred odd guests knocked back juices and multicoloured drinks by the gallon. It was a great night, but I was banjaxed by the time I hit the hay.
After that I had a good few days in Delhi. I met up with some friends and ate like a king. Between Indian fast food in Neruli’s on CP, fish in Blanco’s at Khan Market, Mughal style legs of lamb at Karim’s in Old Delhi or mango milkshakes in Gianni’s, I generally spent the week stuffing my face.
Then I overnighttrained it to Varanasi, one of the oldest permanently populated cities in the world, and sacred pilgrimage place for Hindus and Buddhists alike. I’m happy to inform you that I’m now clean, not clean in the sanitary sense (I’m far from that after twelve hours of train), but clean in the spiritual sense rather. Varanasi is on the Ganges river (Ganga) and a quick dip is supposed to clean your soul and absolve your sin. When I say it was a quick dip though, I mean it was lightning. The river is fairly manky. When you walk along the ghats at the river, some of them are for swimming in and some are burning ghats, where bodies are burned in Hindu funeral rites. So if you’re unlucky, you can have a half charred human foot or hand float past you while you’re bathing. I didn’t give it the time for that. See below for some pics of Delhi and Varanasi.
The Mahananda Express is running four hours late. It’s supposed to be arriving into New Jalpaiguri now (1pm), but it’s gonna be more like 5pm. Then I’ll jump onto the ‘toy train’ which will bring me up to Darjeeling, ex-hillstation of the Brit’s and tea plantation zone. The weather in Darjeeling should be nice, compared with the heat of Delhi or Varanasi. Everyone warned me that the heat would be unbearable and although it has been hot, with temperatures wavering around the 40 degree mark, it’s been fair from unbearable. You wouldn’t want to be running a marathon in a plastic bag in the midday sun, but then again, you wouldn’t want to be doing that anyway. You find yourself unconsciously jumping sunny hurdles between shadowed straights during the day. At night, you can sleep well as long as you have a decent fan above you (one that isn’t too loud; first thing to check in a new room!).
In other news, I’ve gotten fed up of being told what to do and what not to do by random Injuns with or without a uniform. There’s mad security everywhere here, in cinemas, train stations, shopping malls and just about anywhere where wealthy Indians could possibly congregate. Every shop has its own private army and there are security ‘systems’ in place everywhere. I emphasise systems, because none of them actually work. You’ll have fifteen armed guards and four metal detectors supervising and controlling the entrance to the train station, frisking people, going through bags etc. and then ten feet away someone will have left another door open through which people will be filing into the station unperturbed. Every corner you turn, there’s some little wallah with a private security uniform on telling you that you can’t walk here (even though the entire population of India could be walking in front of you). If you sit down in a train station, you can be assured someone with stripes on their arm will ask you to move. So I’ve given up, I’ve now added security men to the growing list of people I ignore in India (beggars, touts, policemen, salesmen, religious people etc.). Not surprisingly, nothing has actually changed. If I just ignore them, then they (like everyone else) will eventually go away and leave me alone… hihihi. Oh, the irony… as I write this a man approached attempting with body language to lay claim to my seat. I showed him my ticket (not letting him touch it, just see it) and now I’m happily ignoring him while he’s rattling on about something.
It sounds like I’m a bastard, but honestly, I’m not! You’ve got to stand up for yourself here, or you’ll be walked all over. Even in terms of safeguarding your private space and sanity of mind, you have to assert yourself. If you engaged with everyone who tried to engage you in conversation, you’d actually never move off the spot.
Ur man on his way to the mountains again…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
