16th of February

My last day in India. I'm spending it with a cousin who I haven't seen in many years, and his wife. I had such fun with them, rather than making you read many words in which I try and describe what happened I'll let the pictures speak for me.






I think my cousin looks better than me with the flower, but I'm up for disagreement.

15th of February

I left my cousins house heading back to Bombay, from Pune (pronounced Puna) to visit another cousin. I was taken to a taxi station where you can arrange to share a taxi for the trip back to save money. After dismantling my pack so that it fitted under a seat I got in the back of a 4 wheel drive, the kind of seat where kids seat when the car is full.

I was sharing the back with another guy and it wasn’t that bad. Then two more people joined us in the back and it started getting very crowded. All in all there were 16 full grown Indian males in the car. However, I think the guy with the worst seat wasn’t us poor bastards in the boot, but the guy who had the driver sitting in his lap. And no I’m not joking. There were 4 people on the front seat (bench seat) and one guy had the driver sitting on his lap. It made me wonder who was pushing the pedals.

13th of February

I’m staying in with the son of the family I stayed with in Bangalore. He’s a major in the Indian Army. I could tell you what division but then he’d have to kill me.

The house he and his family live in was built at the end of the 19th century, a beautiful old stone building with two bathrooms and one bedroom. The ceilings are high, bloody high. If I were to stand on my own shoulders and then do so again I wouldn’t be able to touch them and currently there is a false ceiling in place so I don’t know how high they truly are.

I went for a walk through the army grounds and saw and . Really amazing stuff.

10th of February

I attended a medical conference today as my dad had paid for registration and couldn’t make today. When I arrived there was no real organisation and just getting my conference satchel was a task in itself.

Halfway through the day I noticed that there were torches flashing out the back of the stage and sniffer dogs being lead around. After I left the conference there were metal detectors at the front gate, everyone was getting frisked, bags checked and a special booth had been setup to screen women.

So far however there has been no boom.

8th of February

While getting a bus across the tarmac at Bangalore airport the driver stopped in front of our plane on an essentially empty tarmac and started honking his horn before driving an additional 20 metres and letting us off. I’m not sure if he really expected the plane to move out of the way but you have to admire his delusion.

India Transport

There are various methods of transport in India ranging from suicidal to suicidal.

1. Walking
2. Motorbike
3. Rickshaw (auto or bike)
4. Car
5. Taxi (distinct from private cars as the drivers seem to have death wishes)
6. Government bus
7. Private Bus (deluxe or semi-deluxe)
8. Volvo (coach)
9. Train

Walking is perhaps the most hazardous transport medium if you’re near a road and the one least undertaken by middle class Indians. There are no such things as pedestrian crossings, sure they are painted on the road but if you are to use one you’d be painted on the road, then painted around by the traffic police. I recently had to cross a busy road and after waiting several minutes for a break in the traffic I almost went back to ask the soothsayer when the next break in traffic would be.

Auto Rickshaws are fantastic concept, most of the time when you want to use a taxi you only need two seats or maybe three so why waste money dragging around additional seats and a boot when it’s not necessary. So the rickshaw is the answer, a three wheeled yellow and black bird cage powered by a lawnmower engine. They can be very scary depending on the driver you have managed to flag down and negotiate either the activation of the meter or a charge you’re both happy with. Rickshaw drivers basically hurl their vehicle through every gap in the traffic they can find. I’m sure several times I’ve been in one that’s somehow managed to occupy another vehicles space time somehow without having an accident.

The rickshaw drivers for reasons only known to themselves mount their side mirrors on the inside of the cab, orientated so that the only thing they can see is the back seat. The mirrors also frequently have written on them “Objects in the mirror appear closer than they are” which strikes me as terribly useless because by the time an object you would like to see in your mirrors is visible it has crushed through the back wall of your vehicle.

A bus provides exactly n – 5 inches of leg room, where n is the distance between hip and knee. A semi deluxe or deluxe bus are really the same thing but when you book the tickets you’re told that the bus is deluxe and yet when it arrives it’s clearly semi. On top of that the deluxe is really a misnomer as the bus is really not deluxe but tolerable. I suggest redefining the classes are tolerable and barely tolerable.

A Volvo bus is wonderful and is equivalent to our coach class. Though it usually involves deafening Bollywood movie, but headphones or ear plugs reduce that to a racket.

In all the transport options only the train is safe and then only if you aren’t taking the class that involves hanging out of the train. In many cases without a molecule of your body inside the actual train as your are literally hanging off someone else.

Space is an important concept, Dr Karl said that of all forms of transport a 747 has the smallest amount of space per person. He obviously hasn’t seen the Indian transport packing solution. Frequently I have seen cars, bikes or rickshaws loaded to the roof with people. A small 5 seater car can easily contain 11 people if packed properly, two people per front seat (including the driver seat) and 5 people squished on the back seat and two additional kids peeking out the boot. In the same manner 8 people + a driver can be fitted in to an auto, a device designed to take 2 in a semblance of comfort.

3rd of February

We were planning on leaving this 500000 horse town and heading back to Bangalore but since Kiruna decided to leak amniotic fluid everywhere the previous night we decided to stay until she popped a baby out.

So we waited and waited, I had warned her that the first baby is usually early and that the first labour is usually prolonged but I didn’t realise how prophetic my statement was. After something like 24 hours in labour she finally gave birth to a baby (or as I might have suggested a little monkey).

As all good celebrations in India call for we went out and bought a packet of sweets. We bought Mysore Pak which was geographically appropriate. As near as I can tell it was 75 % ghee and 25 % sugar which is then fried (probably in Ghee). It was delicious, but after having a finger width slice I’m sure I have heart disease. Simply rising from a chair is now enough exercise to cause angina. But it was worth it.

2nd of February

We went to visit a city called Mysore, it’s in south of India, a nice little town except it has a population similar to Sydney. But it does have small town feel,. We visited a number of people; of note were Kiruna and Rashmi.

Kiruna is of note as she was 39/40 preggers and my cousin and Rashmi is her sister thus require a note as she might get offended if her sibling is only mentioned (hi Rashmi).

Cousins

If you’re my cousin and reading my blog then I’d love for you to drop me a line so I now have your email address. It’s up there in the profiles section.

30th of January

Khushbu arranged for me to spend a day at the hospital she works in, Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre. This is a private hospital with a chunk of its patients coming from overseas for the so called medical tourism.

Khushbu took me to see the head of Anaesthetics and Critical Care who the previous day had invited me to spend today observing the anaesthetic side of things in the hospital. In fact he actually arranged for me to spend the day with one of the ICU consultants. Which was fantastic as this is where I would like to end up practising, probably more through physcians training than anaesthetics but that's neither here nor there.

The ICU had equipment about as advanced as they do at RPAH with staff that had the training to use them. The difference between Escorts and IGMC is unbelievable. The doctors and nursing staff actually seem to care about the patients and want them to get better.

In the 6 hours that I was at the hospital I received more teaching than I had during the entire time at IGMC. It was wonderful.

29th of January

I went to pick Khushbu up from her hospital where she works and upon finding her I also found a small dirt ball clutching her. Closer inspection revealed that it was a small child.

Khushbu had been crossing the road to reach her office from the main hospital complex (a hazardous task at the best of times as the concept of pedestrian crossings is very foreign here) and she found an approximately 18 Ð 24 month girl crying her head off in the middle of the road. Seems that this child was lost, but was unwilling or unable to communicate her name or where she lived.

Khushbu took the child to the security gate office, but the security officers there were unwilling to take responsibility for such a child. She received repeated phone calls from her boss asking why the hell had she picked up the child, didn’t she know that she should have just left her there.

After about 30 minutes we dumped the child in the security office in a blanket and started a quick tour of the hospital. It was simply beautiful, especially after compared with what I had experienced in Shimla. The wards were clean, no blood on the floor, walls, bed linen and the equipment worked.

A short while later we received a phone call saying that the police would take over the case and we had to take the child to the nearest police station. The hospitals car was called and a driver, security officer and some random chap accompanied us to the station. The police then declined to have anything to do with her unless we took the girl around to the slum towns to try and find her parents. Fortunately the police agreed to accompany us.

Going through the slums was well worth it, seeing a bit of India that I would have really been a bit worried about going by myself. Each time we stopped we were flocked by horde of people trying to see what the policeman was talking about.

We spent about an hour trying to find the girl’s parents with no success. Whether that was due to not finding them or their unwillingness to come forward and admit to owning the girl. In fact all we managed to find out was that when the policeman yelled at the girl and poked her she would hide in Khushbu’s shawl and wipe snot on it.

We finally left the girl with the police who were going to transfer her to a larger station who would then deal with her.

Snowman

I built a snowman at the top of one of the mountains around Manali we climbed. The climb didn't deserve a blog entry but I though the snowman did.

26th of January

Today we caught the Toy Train (also known as the Himalayan Queen) down from Shimla to Kalkua and then the Shitabdi to Delhi. The Toy Train is so called because of the gauge of the tracks it rides on. When you see them it makes you think of the tracks that are in use at amusement parks, the kind of train that kids sit on top of rather than inside of. I was fully expecting to have to do that, but fortunately there was an actual inside of carriage to get into.

We descended around 800 m over about 5 hours with a run of about 100 km. Not the worlds fastest train, but certainly one of the more scenic trains I have been on.

Commentaries on Indian Society

Indians have a rather unhealthy love of paper work and the associated red tape. Nothing can be done without being in the right queue at the right office for at least 20 minutes. Despite several queues being labelled identical things they can be different, and how the difference is known is, at least, unknown to me. They are very much like Douglas Adams’ Vogons.
They wouldn’t even save their own grandmothers from the ravenous Bug Blatter Beast of Trall without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again and finally buried in soft peat for three months and then finally recycled as firelighters.

22nd of January

My parents arrived in Manali today. Not content with pursuing me one quarter of the way across the globe they decided to keep going half way across the country, then they followed me all the way across the city till they found me. Unwilling to wake up the guy who sleeps behind the counter they rang my mobile at 0630 and woke me up. I then had to go downstairs and wake up behind-the-counter-guy. Why this was better achieved by me and not them I’m not sure. As best I can tell all it accomplished was waking me up.

I spent most of the day travelling around with my parents. We bought a sim card for my mother’s phone, which took about 3 hours. The main reason for this is the Indian love of paper work and the inability of the average Indian to work outside of the provided framework. To gain a sim card one must be an Indian with a permanent address, I can only fulfil one of those requirements. So I went to a hotel, got a letterhead and forged a letter stating I was a guest. Of course you need a photo as well, as well as photocopies of your passport. Each of which was revealed after gaining the previous piece of documentation.

21st of January

Mark and I decided to climb the mountain behind our hotel to get a closer look at an ice waterfall. Due to the treacherous nature of the off path areas I couldn’t make it close to an ice waterfall without seriously risking sliding on some ice and then off a cliff which was rather sad.

The cliffs on the side of the mountain we decided to climb looked distinctly like the cliffs of Minis Tirith.

On my way down I saw three kids above me and seconds later they were below me. How they managed to do this while wearing either poor sneakers and in one case naught but sandals and socks I have no idea. Just before the bottom the most tragic thing happened, my loyal boots (which many of you are no doubt familiar with as they have crushed many toes) decided to fail. One of them developed a rather large tear in its sole. This first became apparent when I tried to wash some of the accumulated dust off them in a running creek. My left foot became very cold, on inspection the boots sole was ripped from side to side. Why do my boots get a whole paragraph? Because I miss them terribly and they have served me so loyally over so many years. I can hardly count how many small children have been crushed beneath their heel and never gave me a blister.

20th of January

Before we left our hotel we called up several others a little higher up the valley with potentially better views than the back of another building and a tyre dump. We found one that promised an open fire in each room with a sack of wood only $2.50, which excited us as it might be the first warm room that we had experienced in our entire India experience. Of course the hotel was closed for winter. We settled on a hotel in Vashisht and walked to it.

Our hotel was the best we had stayed in so far and very cheap ($15/night + $3 for a heater). The top feature was which the hotel provided only indirectly, was the view. It was spectacular, less than a kilometre from our hotel soared a three kilometre peak, now sure we were two kilometres above sea level already but that doesn’t dissuade from the majesty of the peak. Just behind, to the left, to the right, in fact in 180 degrees from our balconies were towering mountains, some capped with snow. At the bottom of the valley flows some river, I was probably told its name but I didn’t pay attention, I nicknamed it the silver lode due to the way the sun reflected off it. Just wondrous, I really can’t describe how sensational our views were.

As it was off season there were only a few restaurants open with pretty limited cuisine but the food was very good.

19th of January

Mark and I decided that the mountains around Shimla were too far away to easily climb. Mainly because to get to them we would have to take a bus or a taxi, and after Mark ended several hundred kilometres from his destination because a taxi driver didn’t realise that that there were three towns within several hundred kilometres of each other we were going via foot. So we decided to go to a town called Manali.

Unfortunately the only way to Manali is taxi or bus thus violating the above paragraph. There are several classes of bus in India, starting from the public bus then semi deluxe, deluxe and finally Volvo (regardless of actuall manufacturer). The last would equate to coach in Australia, the first being some kind of hell spawned ride that is horrifying to be stuck on. We could only get a so called deluxe bus to Manali as the Volvo’s run from Delhi. When our bus arrived it was clear that it was only deluxe in comparison to the public busses. The major advantage was another few inches of leg room (still insufficient for me) and the seats in sets of two rather than 3 and 2 as in a public bus. The ride to Manali was 10 hours long and I assure you it sure felt like 10 hous.

The roads in India as I have previously mentioned are pretty abysmal (that is straight from the abyss) and our bus driver seemed determined for us to be aware of how hard it is to stay on them as he threw the bus around every corner on the road. Learning from my last trip I had bought some ondancetron, which is a very potent anti-nauseant. I took my dose and started to feel at least some relief from the horrendous cornering, unfortunately many of the Indians on the bus were not similarly medicated and demonstrated this by vomiting spectacularly from the window down the side of the bus. I provided several of the bus occupants with said drug to which there was rapid relief thus gaining myself an orange. I guess you could call it my first paid medical work.

Arriving in Manali night we looked at a few hotels and crashed in the first that we found had two beds in the bedroom, since it is low season we never have any problems finding accommodation.

6th of January

Last night we went to a little town (possibly a village) so that on the following morning we could get an early start climbing Hatu peak.

This morning we decided not to get up early and didn’t start our trek until about 1000. The walk from the hotel to the peak is approximately 8 km and a rise of 700 m. Now while that rise doesn’t sound like much we were starting from 2700 odd metres and ascending to 3400 metres. Which in theory is enough to give some signs of altitude sickness, but luckily for us since we had been dwelling at 2300 metres we’ve had enough time to adapt.

The climb started well enough, a nice gentle slope, scenic views. A bit of the way up we found an emergency shelter, outside of which was rectangular dug out pit, filled with ice. I postulated that it was a dam for watering animals during the not quite so frozen season whereas Mark proposed that it was an ice skating rink. Later it turned out that I was right.




Whilst we were having a look around a car showed up and we had a chat with the occupants. As per most conversations we’ve had in India they revolved around “Where are you from?”, “What are you doing here?” and “Where are you staying?”. After answering those questions and then commenting on the state of cricket (since we’re from Australia) they went up the hill.

We reached the last driveable bit of the road (we were walking, but it was where other cars were parking) and we ran into the car full of people that we met earlier on, turns out they were filming a documentary on the state we are currently staying in, Himchal Pradesh. They invited us to climb up the rest of the slope with them, about 3 or 4 km.

Along the way Jampa (the guide who was with the other party), Mark and I decided to take the scramble path up a section rather than taking the long road route. It was rather fun, but a bit scary as it was very icy and snowy with footing that wasn’t entirely clear. I made it safely to the top and we proceeded along the way to Hatu peak. As we got higher the road became more and more treacherous, but thankfully I had an ice axe that provided me with sufficient stability to traverse the more precarious services.

We reached the top and viewed a magnificent 360 degree panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. Including a good stretch of the Himalayas, the vista (not the Microsoft one) was just magnificent. I’ve tried to capture it on the camera but it really just doesn’t do it justice.

The party that we were with dragged up a set of ropes and harnesses so we went abseiling (falling with style as I prefer to call it) down a 10 metre cliff. During all our walking with this party we were filmed in our attempts. After our abseil we were interviewed in which we gave a very short bio and how we felt about the state.


On the way back the film crew asked if they could film us going back down the scramble path. I avoided taking the same path down as I took up as it was fairly compacted snow and quite slippery in places with ice. About one third of the way down I slipped and threw my arms out to catch myself. It worked; I arrested my descent, but not quite as I planned. I felt, as I stopped myself, my left shoulder cease dwelling where it was supposed to and come out. I dislocated my shoulder. Lucky for me I’ve done this a number of times and I know it will pop back in given a short while, which thankfully it did here. I managed to continue my descent but not in such a stylish way (not that dislocating a shoulder is stylish). This wasn’t falling with style, it was simply bum sliding down this slope.

before

after

We made it down the rest of the hill with no further incidents. Half way down they director decided it would be a good idea for the talent to learn how to ski. Unfortunately there was no snow around for her to ski on so she did so on an icy road. She had as much skiing talent as I do and after being placed on skis promptly fell over. So they re-shoot scene having her hold on to the skis for the first shoot, then shoot her falling over after travelling around 1 metre. To be fair I fall over roughly after the same distance.

Guess which girl below is the talent.

1st of January

It’s the New Year, happy New Year everyone. Over here it’s just cold, bloody cold.

Commentaries on Indian Society

I really wish Indian would look around themselves occasionally. Their country, especially in Shimla is beautiful. Simply stunning, but they just drop their rubbish wherever they damn well please. Rubbish seems to congregate in places on the slopes and forms what Mark poignantly called a trashalanche.

Kissing is forbidden from being portrayed in the entertainment industry and yet if you watch a Bollywood music video it becomes clear that showing a whole lot of skin while dancing using moves which are more appropriate for strip club (or so I would imagine, not that I would know) isn't. Doesn't really add up.

23rd of December

Today we walked to the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies and then on to the Viceroys residence. The Viceroys residence was the place where the Viceroy lived during the time of the Raj. It was built in the Scottish baronial style, which basically boils down to very impressive.

After the Raj left it was converted to some important political residence for the new government and later in to a university building in which humanities and social science are studied. We went on a tour of the building in which we had to pay 50 rupees and 20 rupees for Mark and myself. I saved the dollar by showing my Indian citizenship card. Not that they readily believed me, I think the thing that saved me the money was the fact that the card listed my occupation as student, and currently I guess I am a student.

The tour consisted of 2 rooms and two hallways. The first hallway consisted of a brief history (which I didn't listen to as you can observed from my above paragraph) and showing us the old felt mountings for the guns and sword. There aren't any weapons left, they've been removed but the felt remains, impressive. In the second hallway we were showed a library where we weren't allowed to see inside and some brass light switches. Which all the Indians then queued up to see, we did to, to see what all the fuss was about, they were light switches. The next two rooms were equally impressive as the light switches, so once we hit the museum (a room with some low quality photos) we bailed, which was fortunately the end of the tour. That said just walking around the grands of this place was fantasitic. Really beautfiul, with old trees, lovely grass fields with the obligatory couples being couples on them. Indian style couples though.

21st of December

Today we started in the general theatres in the hospital. If I thought the other cardiothoracic vascular theatre was a bit disturbing the general are far far worse. They look like they are from a MASH scene. White drapes, halothane, no ventilators, blood everywhere. In one theatre the only monitoring they had was ECG, the sats probe was broken and the BP cuff wasn't connected. They do possess some advanced equipment, like a laparoscopic stack, but currently it's broken.

Unlike the cardio theatres, there didn't seem to be a disaster associated with each operation. The operation of choice is a cholecystectomy; I've put this down to the Indian diet of eating things doused in ghee,

Indian food is fantastic, wherever you walk there are dhabas; shops that sell all sorts of delicious food, usually deep fried. But it isn't ordinary deep fried western food, because that would be disgusting and unhealthy. This is deep fried indian food, which is delicious and unhealthy. We've been having samosas, paranthas, bread. Just to clarify the middle one isn't strictly deep fried, but it is cooked in a puddle of ghee. When I say bread, I do mean bread, plain ordinary bread dipped in batter.