Come, hear me!

   Early morning, we left our ultra sh**ty Shamba-la Hotel, and headed for Pangong Tso. We passed the third highest motorable pass, Chang La, drinking the awesome “complementary” Masala Chai, courtesy the Indian Army (Thank you guys!)

The landscaping was awesome, all along the way.

In this picture on the right, can you spot the road?

Pangong Tso, one the largest HALs. Alas, it was quite overcast, not the best day for photography.    

Plug for Jimmy (I promised and I owe him): Quite an awesome guy, driver, Sumo Grande owner. You want to move around Ladakh, you want to move with Jimmy (or Zimmet, I think, his real Buddhist name). I can give you his contact, if you are interested.

Pangong did not prove to be very lucky for bro. There is a small Himalayan bee, which when comes in contact with human eye, lays eggs in it. This time, it found S’s eye as its nest. We immediately turned back to Leh, which was a good 5 hours away. On the way, in a military first aid camp on Chang La, the doctor told us that the situation is serious, and we should hurry to Leh. Jimmy increased his speed, but along the way infection spread to S’s ear too and it started paining a lot. Hearing this, Jimmy really stepped on it, and made it to Leh in almost record time.

Now hear this: Eye doc’s time was till 6. We reached his clinic after 6:15. He had almost locked the door, on his way out. Seeing the emergency, he opened up, spent an hour with S and managed to get most of the eggs out, using various eye scraping tools, water syringes etc. At the end of this active session, he flatly refused to accept any fee, citing that he works in the govt hospital during the day and that salary was enough for him.

As if this was not enough, the next day, he called us for a re-inspection in his office in the Leh Hospital.  He also wanted us to consult an ENT specialist for the pain in the ear.

When we reached hospital the next day, S’s pain had increased tremendously again. We were shocked to see that whole hospital was on strike, asking for 6th pay commission salaries. Obviously chamber of Dr. Angchuk was locked. Jimmy was with us. He told us not to worry and after some searching and enquiries, he was able to determine that doctor was sitting in Suptd’s office. We went there. As soon as doc saw us, he immediately asked us what was S’s situation. Hearing that it is not good, he asked us to reach his room. By the time we reached there, already 4 nurses had started preparations for a minor procedure. Doc later told us that some small eggs had been left the evening before and now they had grown. Doc and his nurses worked again actively, and this time were able to give the eye a very good clean-up, as the instruments in the hospital were much better than in his clinic. Now the doc was satisfied that there are no more eggs left.

When we reminded him that he had asked us to consult an ENT doc too, he asked us to wait and disappeared. Within no time, he was back with his ENT friend and both of them again conducted a thorough examination of S. Again these specialists took no fees. They were on strike!

I was flabbergasted. In any of the cities down south, such attention is not paid even in good private hospitals, if we ignore the extremely expensive ones like Max, leave aside Government hospitals. The service provided by on strike docs and nurses were stupendous and I bow to them.

At that moment, I felt, (very selfishly) it is good that Leh remains cut off from rest of India for major part of the year. Here, people still know the meaning of service and humanity.