Anamika Mukherjee - Worth Every Gasp: A Lone Womans Journey in the Himalayas...

Iawoke to a mild but rapidly escalating sense of panic. I was in Leh, and I wasalone. Not only was I alone, but I was poised to be alone for an unspecifiedperiod of time extending potentially to three months. From where I lay, alone,three months looked like an eternity. Anything could happen in three months.

But just rightthen, nothing happened. Nothing went on happening for several hours, but when Ichecked the time, only five minutes had passed. Fantastic, I thought grumpily.At this rate I wont last three weeks.

I got out of bedand walked three steps to the window. The exercise got my blood flowing and abit of courage started to creep back into my veins or wherever it is thatcourage creeps. The Stok range, looming large outside the window, mocked me.Touch me, if you can, it seemed to say.

I had arrived inLeh two weeks ago, with Amit my husband, and another couple, good friends ofours, Sridhar and Sowmya. Wed come straight to this guest house, and here wedspent a couple of busy days, acclimatizing and preparing for our trek. We hadfinally decided to go on the Markha Valley trek, which we had organised througha local trekking company. We had a lot of trekking experience between us: i t was Sowmyas first trek and Sridhars second; my third; and Amitsfifth.

It was early inJune, then, and we were told that some of the high passes were still blockedwith snow. But wed come determined to trek, so we paid up and booked our tripanyway. That trek had been only marginally short of disaster. Sowmya decided bythe end of day one that this trekking business was not for her. She wanted hercreature comforts and she wanted them right now! On the morning of the secondday, she and Sridhar split from the two of us and returned to Leh, taking onehorse and one guide with them.

Amit and Icontinued with the rest of the horses, guides, and cooks and all theprovisions for four. It should have been luxurious, but it went badly from thestart. I struggled to keep pace with even the slowest, least-fit trekkers onthe route, and, after three or four days, it began to appear as though I wasjust hopelessly out of condition and wouldnt be able to complete the trek.Every day, I limped along at an agonising pace, and most days I had to bedelivered to camp on horseback, like a sack of atta. It looked as thoughI was not well-acclimatized: I had a persistent, dry cough and a pain in thechest; there were ugly clots of blood issuing from my nose; and I was alwaystired and gasping for breath.

Still, we werentseriously worried about any of this until I began to cough blood. Thenwe were worried. We turned back at once and made it to the nearest road head,the point where the motorable road ran out and trekking trails took over. Itwas an overnight journey away and I made it only by sitting ignominiouslyastride a horse the whole way. At least the horse ride should have been fun, asI love riding, but even that was a hair-raising experience with the steep,sandy and stony terrain. Every time the horse descended a slope, I wonderedwhether I would stay aboard or suffer the further ignominy of landing with acrash on my substantial backside, and perhaps causing a mini earthquake orlandslide to boot.

When at last wereturned to Leh, I was diagnosed with pulmonary oedema, at which I feltsomewhat vindicated. At least I wasnt just too fat and lazy only thoroughlysick. It was a rather edifying thought that pulmonary oedema can beunpredictably and dramatically lethal. From being the villain of the piece,having caused us to abandon our trek half-way, I became, overnight, the heroinewho had struggled heroically against all odds, unto the very verge ofmartyrdom.

As befitting atragic heroine, I was sternly instructed to lie in bed for several days and bewaited on hand and foot. Drink plenty of fluid, especially fruit juices,exhorted the doctor. And absolutely no exertion at all for two days, he addedsternly. Either that, he went on, or go to hospital and lie under an oxygenmask. While the oxygen mask appealed to the dramatist in me, I decided that acomfortable bed in a cosy guesthouse might be more entertaining than a drearyhospital, so I promised to be good and stay put.

Then, as a partinggift, the doctor gave me a shot of Lasix.

On both of myprevious treks, Id had some degree of fluid retention, which caused my hands,feet and face to swell up perceptibly. What I hadnt noticed in this trek, wasthat not just my hands and feet, but virtually the entire length of my arms andlegs had swollen up in an alarming fashion. The Lasix injection had an effect rathersimilar to that of a pin-prick in a water balloon: I spent 60 per cent of thenext twelve hours rushing as much as my highly breathless condition wouldpermit to the bathroom, with a critical bladder situation. So much for noexertion! By the end of that time, I must have passed about two-thirds of mybody weight down the toilet. Now thats a novel method of losing weight fast.

After a couple ofdays of complete bed rest and several days of very, very limited activity, Igradually limped back to normal. That was when Sridhar, Sowmya, and Amit bademe goodbye and left me to my own devices.

This was a planneddesertion; planned, in fact, mainly by me. I had decided that I absolutelyneeded to spend some months in the mountains, getting to know them better.Ideally, I would have wanted Amit to spend that time with me, but three monthsaway from work was more than he could bear. Besides, one of us had to keepearning our bread, butter, and Himalayan vacations. Trekking equipment,unfortunately, does not grow on trees.

I consideredvarious alternatives to travelling alone going with friends, with family, orgoing on a package tour somewhere. But in the end, I decided that if I wasgoing to take the leap and travel for three months, Id better do it on my ownterms, even if that meant travelling alone. That way, if I wound updisappointed or, lets say, dead Id only have myself to blame.

Of course, afterthe pulmonary oedema, I should have reconsidered. Theres nothing like a closebrush with death or even an imagined close brush with death to inject a bitof common sense into a person. It did, in fact, inject common sense intovarious people, just not me.

Go home, saidSridhar, earnestly, and come back next year. You are not fit for this venturenow.

My parents, hadthey known all, would very likely have said the same, only more vehemently.Like Sridhar, and unlike Amit (who knows me too well), they might also havetried to appeal to my common sense. But common sense never gets one very far,and giving up is not something Ive ever been very good at, so I persisted.

Still, once thelast of my companions had left Leh by the early morning flight, and once I wasawake enough to know that they actually had, panic made its presence felt.Three months in the mountains and not a single known person around on whom Icould depend? What had I let myself in for?