Into the Himalayan villages - Than Gaon

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Amazing how far behind you get on these blog things...

So, fourth week of rotation - Than Gaon village, the one I was really looking forward to. We'd been up there before for the bbq, but we hadn't really gotten to look around. Basically Than Gaon is a village of about 10 families, so maybe 100 people, up in the mountains pretty close to Moussouri (you can hike from one to the other in about 6 hours). We lived in little thatch-roofed huts, each filled with four beds covered in mosquito nets (thank goodness!). The other girls complained, but thought the nets were awesome - not only do they keep out all the creepy crawlies, but it's almost like you're in your own secret tent. (I dunno, as a kid I loved those bolster beds with the curtains you could draw around them, so maybe it just stems from reminding me of that or something. =) ) No fan, only one light bulb, a separate house for the bathrooms and bucket-showers, and everything runs on solar power! It was awesome. =) Like camping, but with work to do and lots of laundry I needed to catch up on after that weekend long hike and the week before's stuff. =P Seriously, it seems weird, but one of the things I'm going to be the happiest to see when I get back to the States (besides fish, some veggies other than tomatoes, okra, cabbage, and eggplant - all they seem to eat here, and fruits I can eat without peeling) is a *washing machine.* Hand-washing things in buckets just never seems to really get anything _truly_ clean. Especially anything white. I wish I hadn't brought anything white with me, I'm just going to have to bleach it all when I get home....

Anyway, our schedule went like this - Monday and Wednesday were yoga, breakfast, clinic until 1:00, lunch, break, clinic from 4:00 - 6:00, break, dinner. Tues and Thurs we hiked out to surrounding villages with our medical supplies and set up clinic there for several hours, for people who are unable to get to Than Gaon. The clinic in Than Goan is a small building with two floors, the bottom being his office - desk, chairs, and a table for the patient to lie down on, another table for patients who need IVs or need to lie down for longer, and a pharmacy where Sonny would dispense whatever combination of Allopathic and Aryuvetic medicines Dr. Paul prescribed. Dr. Paul is such a character. He's this little man of maybe 5' 3'', and seems so serious until he starts talking to you, when he starts joking all the time. We were going on our 3 hour hike on Tues (pretty hard, down the hill, forded the river, up all the way again, then up and down maybe 2 or 3 more hills before it finally flattened out more or less and you weren't constantly climbing or descending) and suddenly he shoots down this random path, with half of us going after him. Then he turns around, this grin on his face, and says, "wild chicken!" He loves chicken. Apparently he "wanted" to catch it and take it home with us so Raoul the cook would make it for dinner. =P Another time we were stuck in the pouring monsoon rain (imagine a giant never-ending bucket being poured from the sky and you'll have approximately the right idea. We were soaked to the marrow in our bones...) and trying to get back to our tents when he suddenly stops in the middle and shouts, "red light!" He thought it was hilarious. A little scarier was when we were stopped for lunch on our trek Thursday, and we were chucking little rocks at a tree that had a knot in it, when Dr. Paul decides to join us, only instead of getting a little stone like us, he grabs a rock the size of a fist and just chucks it at the tree, which of course misses but then falls down the mountain. The next day we have a guy come into the clinic with a horrible gash on his hand. We asked how it happened and it turned out he was thrushing grass when "those mischievous monkeys" that are around all the time chucked a rock at him....

Than Gaon as a whole was fun. I wanted to be in the rural Himalayas, and other than the weekend trips I've been on, this is the closest I've gotten with the program. We saw a fair number of patients each day, though it was a little disappointing when we'd trekked 3 hours on Tues to only have about 20 patients or so, and then had to trek all the way back. I'm so glad I'd just gone on that long hike over the weekend, so that I was already adjusted to the altitude and any hike afterwards just couldn't seem as hard. Poor Michelle was dying on the trip and didn't go with us on our hike Thursday, despite it only being an hour away and flat this time.

Highlight - Raoul made us chicken on Wed night!!! MMMMMM!!! It's been so long since I had any meat and I love chicken as most of you know, so it was *great.* The only 2 other times I've been offered meat when I wasn't at a restaurant was in Moussouri, where I couldn't recognize a single piece of the chicken in the two bowls I had (I swear, it could all have been bits of neck and feet or something), and at Mrs. Mehta's where it was shredded and spicy and I was too sick to eat it. Not that I'm missing meat all *that* much. I really miss fish, since back home I eat it at least once a week, and just a variety of food. Every single meal here is rice, some sort of dal, a spicy veg (okra, eggplant, or cabbage, and roti (a type of bread). It's good, but after 4 weeks I'm seriously hankering after some Chinese, Italian, or really just anything other than Indian!!

Anyway, we left Than Gaon on Thursday night (in the middle of the monsoon, in an open jeep without windshield wipers, bumping along a dirt road along the side of the mountain) so that we could go back to DehraDun and say bye to people, since that was 4 weeks and everyone else was leaving. The only other person who had originally planned on staying for longer than 4 weeks was Amber, but she changed her plans and left as well. Honestly I was pretty done with the program by 4 weeks. Bit homesick for family, felt like I've gotten everything I can from the program, and just want to go home or start traveling. So, through much calling and much flexibility on everyone else's parts, I'm actually cutting my program short too - only 5 weeks instead of 6 (Zara doesn't get here till the end of 5 weeks so...), and then traveling for 2, before going home. So, I'll be home a week early, yay!

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