I finished up with Dharampur on Saturday. I am incredibly confused about my experience—it was a wonderful one, but not what I had expected. I think it is going to take me a little bit of distance until I am able to truly appreciate it for what it was. I learned a lot about health care, my perceptions of health care and medicine, and even discovered some of my own demons (health care demons that is). I inadvertently and shockingly realized that I didn’t exactly equally value all human lives (their access to health care) as I want to. At times I found myself thinking “why give them the medicine, they aren’t going to change their behavior anyway,” I also thought some other, more evil things, but I’m as shocked as you will be so I am not going to put it in the blog. Ask me and I will be happy to explain in person.
My last days in Dharampur I spent working on a reproductive health project. Daxa Auntie gave a lecture on reproductive health to Adolescent girls in 7th and 8th grade. I would follow up her lecture by showing them images and clips from The Miracle of Life (all of our favorite, funny how much I appreciate that movie as an Adult) and The Nine Month Miracle. The girls were incredibly responsive and really enjoyed watching real life fertilization and the different stages of the embryo. I asked them if the images were scary and they said no, they were happy to be able to learn so much. It was by far the most fulfilling thing I have done here so far, and I was happy to end on that note.
Achyuta came Saturday night and now we are getting all set for our one month Himalaya adventure. We have all our camping supplies all set to go. I tried out my sleeping bag this morning—it was glorious! Achyuta’s pack is as tall as me (slight exaggeration), I have no idea how he is going to carry it. I practiced cooking…once…hopefully that wont be a problem.
I am both nervous and excited and even scared! Altitude sickness might be a real problem, so I am trying to mentally prepare and tell my body to be good and acclimatize right away. We are flying to Leh, which is in Ladakh (near Tibet). We are going to do a few treks between Leh and Kargil. The plan is to do one 5 day trek and one 10 day trek. The rest of the time will be spent traveling, acclimatizing, and making our way to Srinagar, which is in Kashmir. We will keep Srinagar as our base and do several treks from there. I am a bit disappointed because I am not as physically fit as I would like to be for a trip like this—I have been rotting in the sun here. But, hopefully my youthful legs will serve me well for 30 days. Ok! So! We’re off! Pray that we have a healthy safe trip and that Ach and I don’t kill each other along the way (yes I am worried about that too)!
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