Day 14 – Oct 23 – Yogurt Camp

This was the second of three days planned for walking from Saldang to Dho Tarap. It was a gentle climb mostly following a river valley up to the base camp for crossing the pass the following day. The scenery was mostly rolling hills, though of course hills are bigger here than elsewhere.

It’s useful background for me to describe the daily ritual of our team. The day begins around 6:30 or 7 when one of the kitchen crew brings us tea in our tent. We’re usually awake by then but if not, it’s a sign for us to start getting our stuff packed. Washing water follows in basins about 20 or 30 minutes later, after which we have breakfast in the cooking tent. On our small trip, they has a cooking tent that is divided into two parts, one for cooking and one for us to eat. That makes it very simple to pass food and dirty dishes back and forth.

Meals are more fancy than anything I would make on a camping trip. Breakfast typically starts with some kind of cereal or oatmeal. Today we had muesli with locally purchased yak milk yogurt – more on this later. After that, we have the main course, which was an omelet plus Indian chappatis (bread). Dinner starts with soup and has an additional course of fruit after the main course. Then after everything, they bring hot milk and water, from which we can make tea or hot chocolate.

Once breakfast is over, we leave our large packs to be put on the mules, and we start walking with only our daypack. While we walk, the staff break camp and then rush ahead to the lunch spot. Local people walk much faster than we do, even carrying heavy loads, so by the time we arrive at lunch, they have already set up the stoves and have hot juice for us. After lunch, we again start walking slowly while they pack, run ahead and have camp set up before we arrive.

Today my digestive system didn’t cooperate. Within an hour after breakfast, I suddenly had diarrhea and I began having stomach pains bad enough to make me think of dysentery. It was all I could do to haul myself up to the lunch place, where I ate only a bit of garlic soup. I arranged to get into my pack (normally not possible until evening) and took the heavy artillery medicines: Cipro antibiotic and Flagyl anti-protozoic. Kinna proposed changing the schedule and camping there, but after a little rest I decided I felt well enough to complete the relatively easy afternoon. I somehow made it to our camping spot, though my stomach still felt uncomfortable.

I’ll spare you the details of what happened next after I lay down to rest. Suffice it to say that I lost my lunch and breakfast too, but then began feeling much better. That led me quickly to a new diagnosis, that the only thing that could have made me so sick so suddenly was food poisoning. Normally our cook Sonam is very careful, but I remembered today’s breakfast included the wildcard of the locally produced yogurt. Normally yogurt is safe since nothing can grow in the acidic curds, but things can still go wrong in places with poor sanitation. And I had eaten much more of the yogurt than Marcia, who had not been feeling bad until then.

Sure enough, however, Marcia began making noises of not wanting dinner and before long she too emptied her stomach. Our staff were quite concerned that neither of us wanted dinner, but I was actually relieved that our trouble should clear itself up rapidly now that we had eliminated the cause.

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