This is short read about my first attempt to trek to Sandakphu. This is meant to be read after my first post about my second attempt. Confusing, I know.
Prologue
It was a hot, humid, and horrible summer day in IIT Kharagpur - where I was doing my summer internship in, when Karan, Sanaa, Hradini (my friends from college) and I finally agreed on the plan to trek to Sandakphu in October. We chose Sandakphu with IndiaHikes since it was the closest to our college and was rated to be of moderate difficulty. Since this was to be the first time we were trekking, the fact that the trail was well established and had a road next to it the entire way up to the summit was a plus just in case something went wrong up in the mountains (definitely no foreshadowing here). IndiaHikes had a fitness requirement of being able to complete a 5K in 40 minutes to join the trek. Sanaa and Hradini had to push hard to meet this goal, but all was well when it was time to board our train to NJP on the 5th of October, 2019. I decided not to take my camera since both Karan and Hradini were carrying theirs. We reached NJP after a 20 hour long train ride just in time to catch the cab that the company had arranged from NJP to leave for Jaubhari.
We met Akshay, who was to be our trek leader, and the rest of our trekmates once we made it to Jaubhari. After the trek briefing, he handed out our health cards while he took our oxygen saturation readings and delegated the job of checking our blood pressure levels to Shiva, one of our trekmates who was a doctor by profession. I wandered off to explore the village after I was done with my checkup and found a small football field near our homestay. I sat there for a while, enjoying the absence of company, and returned back to my room to repack my bag. After a hearty dinner, we hit the bed after what had been a tiring day full of travel.
We woke up to a foggy morning the next day. Around 30 minutes into the trek to Tumling, the fog became extremely dense and did not clear for the rest of the day. On our way to Lamyadhura, a few of us lost our way and had to walk an extra kilometer through leech infested slush before we rejoined the others. I had only a solitary leech to get rid off while Sanaa had to pull out a dozen of them sucking on her leg. Everyone was fending off phantom leeches for the rest of the day. I was completely spent by the time I got to Meghma - I was hungry and the damp, depressing weather had sapped me off most of my energy. I trudged my way to Tumling after lunch through the unrelenting fog. After the health checkup and dinner, I was more than relieved to tuck into my bed for the night.
I was tired when I woke up the following morning. Both the weather and the clothes that we put out to dry the previous remained damp. After breakfast, we started our day’s trek to Kalipokhri. I trekked alongside Shiva and his brother for most of the day and struck up a conversation about running with Shiva. It was only when he described how he trained for his half marathons did I realize that the way I had approached running till then was completely wrong. I had had no concept of easy runs - everyday I ran was a PB attempt. In retrospect, I was incredibly lucky to not get terribly injured. I felt much better when we got to Kalipokhri than I did after the previous day of trekking. We went into our tea house to keep our bags in our rooms and came back outside to stretch. After ten minutes of stretching, which included us standing in a circle and massaging the shoulders of the person who was in the front of us, we headed back to our rooms to get freshen up and get our utensils for chai and snacks. After washing my face, I decided to lie down on my bed for a few minutes since I had some time to kill before everyone else got ready.
I’m not entirely sure when I realized that something was wrong with my body. In the span of thirty seconds, I went from feeling fine to freezing. My chest felt weird. I walked outside to find Akshay and asked him to check my oxygen saturation. At 10,000ft, the altitude we were at, the “normal” SpO2 percentage is 90. Mine was about half that. He then checked my pulse and blood pressure - both were normal. He listened to my lungs with a stethoscope to check for signs of HAPE. They too seemed fine. He gave me an entire tablet of diamox and told me to put on a couple of more layers of clothing while he got me some chai. When he came back, he checked my SpO2 reading again. No improvement. It was 5 in the evening and we had to make a decision - If I was to descend, I had to leave as soon as possible. If I were to stay and my body did not adapt, I had to be hooked up to an oxygen cylinder for the night. Things could get very ugly very quickly if the oxygen cylinder ran out in the middle of the night. We agreed that I would descend to base camp and he went out to find a cab to ferry me down. I was packing my bag when Sanaa, Hradini and Karan came into the room telling me that they would come down with me. I refused. I did not think that it was fair on them to have to stop the trek midway for me. Since I did not have enough cash in hand to pay the cab, Akshay and Hradini collected the money from everyone else. Everyone came out to wish me well and Akshay checked my blood saturation at the door - just in case. Unfortunately, oxygen saturation in your blood does not increase because of hope. He told me that I was always welcome to trek to Sandakphu again with IndiaHikes and that I did not have to pay for it. I promised him that I’d come back to complete the trek and got into the Sumo.
The ride back was a nightmare. Going down a mountain in pitch darkness with a driver who stopped in the middle for a couple of swigs of alcohol while I was shivering after wearing 5 layers had me fearing for my life for the first time. After a couple of hours of driving too fast, we finally made it to Manebhanjan. I stayed the night at a homestay there thankful to be done with what I can only describe as a harrowing day. I felt much better the next morning after a good night of sleep. It was evident from my struggle to make it to the top of a nearby monastery in search of network coverage that my lungs were still not back to normal. I did not get signal from up there but caught a glimpse of the Sleeping Buddha from up there. Akshay had called the previous night to tell me to go back to basecamp to get my vitals checked again. I walked to Jaubhari and got my blood pressure and oxygen saturation checked by Isha, another of IndiaHikes’ trek leaders. My SpO2 levels were back to being “acceptable”. After a couple of phone calls: to my parents so that they could book a train ticket back to college, to Akshay so that he knew I was feeling better, and to a college friend who lived in NJP to tell him that I’d like to crash in his house for a bit, I grabbed my bag and caught a cab to get back to civilization.