The other groups are going for warm up hikes and my friends and I decide it'll be a good idea to join them. I jump into my trusty army boots and pick a nice episode of Tiesto's Club Life and I'm off.
There's a hill right behind the guesthouse and that's the one we're climbing. It looks like no big deal, the length of the slope is about four hundred metres, but you climb in a zig zag to make it less strenuous and easier to balance.
It's an odd feeling. Here you are far away from civilisation and you're listening to club music. The Electronic kind, you expect to hear on the second level of Attica.
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| Photo by Ravi Shankar Karedla |
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| Photo by Ravi Shankar Karedla |
While I'm walking further on the plateau, I notice a few of my group members sit down, close their eyes and meditate. This initially strikes me as natural but there was something odd about it. And then it hits me, "if you're in the fucking Himalayas, you don't close your eyes to meditate. You OPEN your eyes wide and meditation happens".
Of course, I'm polite and don't actually say this out to anyone. I'm just standing there in awe and smiling to myself. I help my friends take a couple of photos and we're back down.
Later in the evening, news spreads around that I'm a medical student (some mistake that to mean doctor, or feel that some qualification is better than none). People start coming to me with all sorts of problems, diarrhoea, vomiting, existential angst, boredom, allergies and I promptly direct them to my friend, who though not medically trained, takes these trips regularly and is more familiar with those conditions. I think I manage to cure some of their boredom by doing magic tricks.
One incident stands out. This gentleman (not so obvious at first), perhaps in his thirties or forties, comes over, asks for the "doctor saab" and tells me he has a dog bite. His long story of how he go bitten by a dog but his teeth didn't penetrate his flesh, and so he doesn't need an injection drowns out my pleas to stop treating me like a doctor, because I'm absolutely not qualified.
He wants me to take a look at his wound and I think I might as well. In the corridor outside my room, in full view of everyone, he proceeds to drop his trousers and show me a little bruise at the back of his thigh. I believed medical school would have adequately prepared me for this, but I am still mildly amused and am just able to suppress a smirk. I of course, direct him to my friend, find an excuse and go to bed.
This is going to be a fun trip.
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