The Last Honeymoon with the Mountains

This is an extract taken from "The Conscious Notebook" (full text here and table of contents here

Chapter 104

 

The Last Honeymoon with the Mountains

The honeymoon was to be decided after the official marriage formalities that Abraham found too bothersome now that he couldn’t wait to be alone with his beloved June. He wanted Goa again but June was firm. The mountains it would have to be and that too Macchapucchare for one last time before June packed her bags for Kolkata again. Abraham had got a nursing home attachment there and it would be convenient for him to chop-chop every day whatever appendices, hernias, and hydrocoeles he could lay his hands on. June had once fancied herself as a surgeon but once when she had taken her brother complaining of chronic pain abdomen to a very impressive professor of surgery in her medical school he immediately posted him for an appendicectomy coming morning in his nursing home. Their father, Samsara, wouldn’t have any of it and said the pain was just an irritable bowel and would go away on its own. Dupki did out grow the pain once he went to college but the incident made June think that surgeons needed to be robot-like if they were to be deemed a good hand. To keep their hands in shape, they had to cut as many appendices they could lay their hands on, if not for the money it would bring in. The more the merrier, the faster the better- An intellectual surgeon was a failed surgeon.

June's Diary

26/10/01:  Set out walking to Baglung bus-park with Abraham protesting vehemently (he wanted to cover the city stretch on car) and then after a 2 hour bus ride through hills and valleys finally came to Nayapul ...Verified our permits in Birethanti and took a quick breakfast before we resumed our walk.

Met my old patient of Diabetes suddenly on one of the villages in the trail...

He treated us to the guavas and oranges freshly plucked from his own garden.

However he looked quite bad, much worse than what I had seen him in the hospital .He had already developed End stage kidney failure due to diabetic nephropathy and he looked all bloated. Also what was particularly worrying was his inability to sleep at night due to the shortness of breath he had while lying down. This meant his kidneys were not excreting water properly and that was all clogging his lungs.

The guavas were tasty...and we sat relishing them near the Bhurundi river where we also spotted a white capped redstart wagging its tail. When we decided to halt for the night in Tikedhunga it was already late and Abraham immediately hit his sleeping bag but again had to arise out of politeness for two Israeli girls who had come to inspect our rooms, whether it was as bad as theirs and then we had a lot of interesting discussions on the Gaza strip and the rising US allergy among the Israelis. They liked Abraham's name as it sounded Biblical and they said a Messiah would come as a savior for all of them according to the Bible...I made them a bit uncomfortable by asking them whether they really thought it was true.

Chapter 105

Regardless, We Continue...New or
Renewed Track

June’s Diary

The next day was a steep ascent to Ghorepani with tremendous views of Annapurna from Ulleri. I met an English couple coming down from Ghorepani whose guide's mother had been my patient. The lady introduced herself as a GP practicing in Cambridge and at the same time teaching communication skills to other doctors. Her husband was a dear young old man with a silver beard and a book on birds of Nepal and looked more like a bird man although he was a professor of architectural history. I wanted to talk more with them on communication skills but they were going in the opposite direction.

Whatever communication skills in med I learnt was from my mother (Who isn't a doctor).She told me what they would have expected from their own doctors and never got. She described the number of occasions she had been inadvertently offended by her own doctors. That provided for me an early start in building rapport with patients, right from my third year Med school because in effect I was avenging my mother by being good to my own patients.

The rest of the trek to Ghorepani was steadily uphill but it was made easier by Karen and her husband from California who discussed a variety of things under the sun (from surface topologies to obstetrics).We had lunch interspersed with sessions of bird watching with redstarts, minivets, orioles and kites making their forays into our imaginations if not into the nearby trees. That night in Ghorepani we had a feast of pizzas, rostis, chocolate pudding and cake but that didn't make the next day's job of climbing to Pun hill any easier although the sunrise was breathtaking. Found a few ladies photographing themselves against the background of the Annapurna baring their backs with ANNAPURNA 2003 written on them. Karen and her husband set out in the other direction towards Annapurna base camp after which they would be going to Khumbu to climb Island peak.

We soon set out for Tatopani after a quick breakfast and met Curtis and Jean Viev on the way. Curtis was a web designer but his first love was music and was soon going to bring out his first CD but before that he would be taking a month's course in Tibetan Buddhism in a monastery in Nepal. The climb down to Tatopani was tough and at the same time beautiful with fields of kodo and fapar gleaming in the afternoon sun, which was interspersed with rain that caught us on the final descent from Santosh lodge. The steep stone steps felt very slippery.

Chapter 106

Also Saw a Bit of the Himalayas

`Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider.

`Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'  Lewis Carol

June’s Diary

The next day was a quick descent to Beni as I already knew the way from last year's Muktinath visit. On the way I met a Norwegian family who were working in Nepal through generations and it felt really interesting to be able to chat all the while in fluent Nepali with people who looked European. Lunch was dashain ko maasu and kodo ko chang(a millet beer) and after reaching Beni found there were no buses since morning as it was the 10th day of Dashain.

A bus did start at 4:00 PM charging exorbitantly although we had to make do with sitting on the roof- top, which too was crowded. After some time however the roof top was gradually transformed into a place to be especially with the near full moon shining on to it a fair share of its gleaming light. It was cold but then somebody was passing around a bottle of apple brandy fresh from Marpha, Mustang.

I met Soul an Australian medical student who was a year junior to Andy who had been doing his elective with us last year and had done the Annapurna circuit in a fairly short time. Then there was this French painter whose medium was oil on water and I wondered whether it was possible to paint using only words. We lay down on the roof top of the bus watching the moon and the stars and the snow peaks dazzling at a distance while the bus moved at its gentle pace.

I felt as if I had seen the world in these few days, more so through the eyes of its people from various countries and off course I also saw a bit of the Nepal Himalayas.