We had been in the Himalayas for some days and were getting used to our new life. The Monsoon had done its share of damage. Most of the popular treks in the surrounding areas were out of reach due to landslides and fallen trees blocking the roads. Our desire to spend a night under open sky in a Himalayan jungle seemed a distant dream. We searched for some safe places in the nearby areas. There was a trail quite close to the village. It wouldn't have qualified as an adventurous trail in normal circumstances, but the rains had made it fairly challenging.
We climbed up with a great enthusiasm, something told us that it was the only trek we were doing on the tour. The trees were getting denser as we moved up ahead and there was an air of wild animals. I could have spent many days right there just roaming around and appreciating nature's beauty, if only the clouds stopped trickling.
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| Its always wise to look before you drink from a fresh water stream in the mountains during the rainy reason, unless you want something surprising to go inside you. |
We got attacked by a creature there, a rather unconventional one, a leech. There was an itch in my calf, I found the slimy creature sucking out my blood as I looked. I reached for it and removed it immediately, not knowing the right way to do it. It left a small bleeding wound which didn't clot for a long time for obvious reasons. Almost everybody else in our group had more than one leech sucking up their blood, including the local boys who were accompanying us. The creatures were all taken care of soon. By the way, just for the info, to remove a leech, Wikipedia recommends using a fingernail or other flat, blunt object to break the seal of the oral sucker at the anterior end of the leech, repeating with the posterior end, then flicking the leech away.
The sun was on its way down and the trickle had started evolving in a downpour, so we thought it best to retreat to our base at the village. We descended to the main road, took a breath, and started downwards again for the village. All this was taking a toll on my knees and I could feel tenderness in the right one. By the time we reached the village, I knew I needed an infusion. The biggest worry was that I did not have a sufficiently large stock of clotting factors with me. I reconstituted my dose and infused it right away, hoping wholeheartedly for my knee to get better. I went to sleep with a fresh joint bleed and a love bite given by a leech, but this was a great day for me on the tour.
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