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Manali-Leh : buses running

Latest bus report came from poster Amy on Indiamike , a Keylong-Leh run that actually went according to the HRTC timetable.

Above (soon) desoumal´s shot from May 28th.

Leh Weather , February 2009

Night and day temperatures in Leh , as shown from the weather widget on leh.nic.in.

Not So High Snow : Khardung La Blocked

Tribune today reports that up to 150 people were stranded yesterday at Khardung La. By the end of the day twenty had been evacuated down to Leh. The police post below the pass will restrict traffic until conditions improve.

Khardung La on Google Earth

Khardung La , the road pass between Ladakh and Nubra valley , runs up to 5350 meters . Zooming in Google Earth you can see the the shed with the often photographed sign :5351. It is invariably claimed to the world highest road at 18380 feet , some 5600 meters. Neither is correct. Wikipedia has a good article on the subject.

Khardung La on WikiMapia.

Worlds Highest … ?

Thugsey Gompa

Worlds highest …. Those two words contains a lot of power , and status . Just below our logical level rests the concept that we should look up to … whatever is higher in the field of vision. Early 19th  blablaology  held a lot of the same blanket admiration for Andean mythos as is accorded today to Tibetan culture , fuelled by that unworded theme : those literally closest to heaven should be infused by … higher values. The concept is in no way restricted to Western culture , the Americans that made a emergency landing in Lhasa in  xx found themselves dealing with hostile reactions because they had placed themselves above the Dalai Lama in the Potala.

India has a number of claims on worlds highest , that complicates my love of India : worlds highest road (Khardung La , not ) highest cable car (Gulmarg , not) . One thing mostly forgotten though is the high politics of India. Mridula posted two years back a photo of probably Indias highest post office in Kibber, my reaction to that was that it might be at the same time one of the worlds highest polling stations : post offices and schools over the world is also where elections take place. In Ladakh and Spiti a third communal setting is used : the Buddhist monasteries.
Ladakh has recently completed elections in this setting. It holds not only some of  the highest elections in the world , but also the smallest constituencies in the world : India defines democracy as the opportunity to participate within a days walk , which means that grumbling Indian civil servants are sent out to open polling stations above 4000 meters … in some cases to serve less than a dozen  voters. Some of the grumbling comes from sharing their sleeping bag with their laptops : it was a long time ago that India got rid of the rituals of boxes , slips of paper etc that is taken for granted in less developed parts of the world .. like where I live. Elections are 100% electronic , even when it involves twenty degrees below in Ladakh , or transporting out the paraphernalia with elephants and working by candlelight in Assam.
My candidate for the worlds highest election : the polling station in Thugsey . It´s probably not 5000 as claimed , but it does ovelook the salt lake Tso Kar : definitely higher than 4553. Democracy , it has to be a higher value.
Other contenders : Anlay Phu , probably referring to what is mostly called today Hanle : should be around 4200 according to Google Earth , the observatory overlooking the plain is at 4500.
Grumblings aside, the image of the six persons finding a way to work out the elections in Thugsey is the sort of thing one wants to read about , post-Mumbai : a Kashmiri (i.e. among other things , Muslim ) policeman with a Ladakhi colleague , a Sikh teacher working in Leh , and three more Ladakhis finding common grounds :  “We only cooked food that all of us could eat,” Mr. Mir recalls, “and shared everything we had, from blankets to extra woollens. It was an educative experience; everyone in our State should be made to go through it!” in the words of Abdul Hamid Mir , a soil expert from Srinagar.

When I show the  picture from The  Hindu and talk of the work put in I get some  reactions on the the theme  “they would be better off with a ..” . Apparently the people involved feel differently : elections is seen as a way of changing their life , starting with the waterpump that saves hours of work every day.

Thanks to Mridula for suggesting the theme in the first place , and Abram Pointet for input on Anlay and more.

All is suffering

…in a recent travel program :

“Hold your breath , for a long time , and follow our team to the deep end , on a dive at the edges of possible :

Down , down , down … we have now passed in to total darkness , nothing is visible beyond our diving lights. The pressure around us builds up relentlessly , a cold hard vice with us in the middle , at the same time as the pressure in our tanks rapidly dwindlles. We push on and manage to glimpse the masts on the sunken schooner with low tanks , and claw our way to the surface on the the very last pound of air pressure. Should have brought a second tank. Topside ,with drinks in our hands and the sun setting over the South Sea it´s hard to believe that this world exist paralell to ours , just over the railing of the boat.
After two hours Lisa is able to move her legs again. “

No , this show never aired. Somehow it´s not seen as cool as losing control in the context of diving. This is however how a diving story would have been presented if you had brought in the team from Packat & Klart , with the same perspective as they recently portrayed high altitude trekking in Nepal.

This is probably the part where I start losing the attention of my Ladakhi & Tibetan friends , negative criticism is seen as an ego boosting trap. But there are times when it is useful to see how things go wrong , what mindsets takes you there. So bear with me as we tag along again with the reporters to Everest Base Camp.

suffering , part 1

“This has to be worst I´ve gone through, ever. Up . up , in to ever thinner air. Never have have I pushed my body this far .. “

This is the first shot of the lead reporter , one week in to the trek. It´s an attention grabber , good TV. It´s also the beginning of a consistently broken timeline which is poor public television , in the sense of getting a good understanding of the subject at hand. Timing is everything in high altitude trekking and climbing : it decides everything from how you see colors to if you can hold down your breakfast. Ultimately it also decides how many come down from the mountain , every year a number of people develop pulmonay and cerebral edema , and at that point mortality becomes high.

Some may also argue that timing is everything in media : early in to the show we are presented with an ironic view of the flight to Lukla , shown three weeks after the catastrophic landing that killed all but one . The programe is also aired the same week as the French ambassador in Kathmandu calls for better awareness and training in dealing with altitude sickness , after three French deaths in the same early in the season.

suffering , part 2

The introductory theme of …suffering will be repeated a number of times from now. The back is suffering , the boots are suffering , dhal bhat is probably also suffering,  the packs … somehow the two magical limits of twenty kilos and two packs are broken , on what basically is a teahouse trek , with a shared incomplete kit. Somehow not only the reporter but also the editors seem to read in a meaning in this suffering , the themes of pushing the envelope , taking yourself to the edge of endurance are repeated again and again. Self realisation through exhaustion. In a viewers submitted section we find another video from EBC , with the comment from the editors that the footage is TV quality images , but lacking emotional content and presence : they specifically ask for a description of aching lungs.
Meanwhile , with or without packs we all will struggle in this situation : everyone who just has arrived at 3000+ meters has the same physical capacity as someone with chronic lung disease. It will get better , but not fast .

cold , suffering ?

“-..and here is Annelie , cosying up …
“-I´m wearing just about everything I have , and the sleeping bag on top of that !”
This is October , around four thousand meters , and in shelter . It´s not that cold , especially in Swedish terms – in numbers. Which takes us back to time , and acclimatisation to altitude. There is no way to understand from the programme how fast they have arrived at this altitude , but this shot tells us one thing : fast. Being cold is intimately linked to incomplete adaption to altitude , with white cold hands and feet from constricted blood vessels in the periphery.

Number, numbers

numbers

Putting on the reporter hat , we are presented with some numbers to understand the physiology : “here at 5000 meters my pulse is over 100 , and my oxygen saturation is 88 – normally it should be 100 % “

So there is stress , and an oxygen saturation that normally would mean a change of pace in the emergency room or ICU. Before this acclimatisation has been mentioned a number of times , but without any real attempt at describing what it is . Is it how fast you walk , is it where you sleep , is it hours , days or weeks we are talking of here ?

Useful numbers missing in this context are :

*numbers of nights above 2000 meters
*maximum safe ascent rate
*production time for red blood cells
* number of urine producing organs ( I kid you not , wearing the reporter hat there is talk of the kidney (singular) , and altitude sickness involving it “freaking out” . High urine output is actually one of the first defence mechanisms when exposed to high altitude. )

“Here I am , waiting for Annelie, at Kala Pattar , 5200 meters . She has never been this high before. She is feeling sick , feverish , her stomach is acting up and she has a headache…”

descend

In short this is a close match for the LARGE! signs you find at every major trailhead in Nepal , from the doctors of The Himalayan Rescue Association beginning with “all symtoms above 2500 meters ..” and ending with (big capital letters ) “DESCEND ! DESCEND ! DESCEND ! “

…even before Annelie turns up on camera , with slurred speech. It´s also the same symtoms the lead reporter recapitulates in the beginning of the program.

So what comes next ? Of course they ascend even further (collective groan from the HRA clinic in Pheriche ) , the option of descending or even just remaining at that altitude isn´t even discussed in the program . Not surprisingly , they don´t make it to the top of Island Peak – but at least they make it down to Namche afterwards.

Rothang opens , 07

Manali, May 16
The 475-km Manali-Ladakh road, closed since December last due to snow, has opened to vehicular traffic, official sources said today.

After clearing the snow and necessary repair work, the road via Rohtang Pass was opened to tourists vehicles yesterday, Naresh Mittal, commander of 38 Border Reserve Task Force of General Reserve Engineering Force (GREF), said.

Acclimatisation myth # 3 : The healing water

Water. Lots of water. If there is one thing you´ll hear again and again , it´s the importance of drinking . A lot.

“I havent peed that much since I was in diapers”

“one litre for every thousand meters..”

Some go on to mention other aspects of fluid balance : thin , clear urine is a good thing , so is a high urine output.

There are some funny aspects , though  : this maxim is for one thing never repeated by medically trained .

The end results of altitude sickness are called edema : excess of fluid in the tissues , mainly the brain and lungs. So this is a way of preventing accumulation of fluids in one place , by pouring in more of it in another.

If you find this hard to folllow , join the club.

The basics of fluid balance are exactly this complex : what goes in up here (the mouth) must come out down here (your urinary outlet of choice) . If not , you will bulge in the middle , i.e. the tissues.

There are modifications to this : a minor part comes out via the lungs and feces , and these losses will grow at altitude, but not multiply.

There is a valid observation here , though : some headaches are caused by dehydration , and they will go away when you push fluids. Dehydration is also linked to AMS : loss of appetite is a precursor of nausea. Treating dehydration is good , preventing it is better (keep track of how much you drink , and the color of your urine) but pushing fluids after you´ve cured your headache will not give any better results in preventing AMS.

The fundamental flaw in the water myth though is that you are  working against the bodys way of adjusting to altitude :  the elevated red blood cell count that takes place the first days are achieved only through concentration – i.e. diminishing blood volume by higher urine output (see myth #2). This is a shift in fluid balance , technically mild dehydration - if you get  headache , the mechanism is out of whack and you should treat it.

There is a simple test for dehydration : check pulse after lying down for five minutes , and then again after standing up. Dehydration will givea marked  increased in pulse rate. Or just push a litre of fluid. Headache gone : fine , dehydration ,  now cured. Persisting headache : AMS , stop or descend.

The really fascinating thing about the water myth is the notion of ” the white coats may scoff at us , but we´ve come up with a really great idea.. ” Leaving the medical profession aside , the method  has been tried and tested , over oand over again : pilgrims , Silk Route merchants , Gurkha soldiers and many more have struggled to cope with the same problem for more than a thousand years , walking along rivers and sacred lakes  and tried everything at hand . If it worked , it would have caught on.

Acclimatisation myths # 2 : The eBay bloodcell

This might seem like a petty point to make , but it is intimately linked to myth # 3 , so we´ll do it anyway.
Rapid ascents start physiological responses , and , after the higher respiratory and heart rate, the increased red blood cell production is the most commonly mentioned.

It seems straight forward : the body senses the lowered oxygen saturation as you ascend (more on that later) , orders some more hemoglobin , which is delivered.

One of the stumbling points here is delivery time : the unspoken assumption here is this a more or less Fed Ex-like process : sign the order and start looking for the mail man . This would be more like Indian mail , though : a blood cell is a complex product , and will take closer to a week to produce.

As with other myths , there is a valid observation at work , with the wrong explanation .
Red blood cell concentration does go up , but it´s the same  old blood cells still going around : concentration goes up since the blood volume decreases after increased urine production. After descent the blood quickly goes back to normal values : don´t count on having a higher hemoglobin level a week after descending below 2000 meters.

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Acclimatisation myths # 1 : Been there , done that

Myths are are explanations of our world, based on experience. Today´s myths play out on the net , and woe unto the ones that question not the experience , but the explanation.

So , before trusting the experience , some quick reality checks when you hear someone cheering people merrily on to a quick jaunt up to a high camp , close to heaven :

1. Been where ?
You will be surprised at how many actually can´t describe where they´ve been – vertically. Discussing itineraries , especially the first inroads, is all about ascent rates : if the advice comes without a clear description of sleeping altitudes firstly , and max altitudes secondly it´s just not workable info.
Been where ? also includes another question : coming from .. ? – again , vertically . If that information is missing , get a good map , or go to Google Earth. Place limited trust in web searches : there is a lot just plain wrong intel out there : like the persistent myths of the worlds highest road , for instance.

2. Done it , really ?
Suggested itineraries often represent ..plans and dreams , not experience. The thing you´d want to do next time. Listen carefully , and you´ll hear that telling , far away voice talking about unfulfilled goals . Which is a form of poetry , well worth listening to. Make it another reason to go – but don´t exchange the map , with the elevation curves, for the poetry when you actually set out.

3. Done what ?
Going thru , and staying at , are two radically different things. There are vast numbers of travellers convinced that they -and you- can handle the altitude of x meters after having traversed a high pass. What can be learned from this is if you were able to handle that ascent profile : a long high plateau below a pass can , often will, hit harder than the high point of the journey.
Ever more important , sleeping poses a bigger challenge than staying awake , and upright.

4.Did it when ?
People will often react differently to rapid ascents , which feeds a perception that it´s a random process . If you look to the time before setting out , a lot of this randomness evaporates, and becomes consistent with the time spent acclimatising before setting out. The one time it started to go horribly wrong the difference between me and the unconscious fellow traveller next to me was the time spent at moderately high altitude before, a pattern that repeated itself in the rest of the group.

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