Oxygen

We flew in to Leh. In an hour we’d gone from sea level to an altitude of 3500 meters. As we stepped out of the pressurized cabin, The Family and I scanned ourselves for signs of trouble. None, as we retrieved our baggage and looked for our ride home. None, as we chatted with the driver about local food. None, as we checked into the hotel. None, as we admired the view from the balcony and took the featured photo. The Family was not surprised. She’d recovered from her flu faster than me, and had tested herself by climbing the stairs to our high-floor apartment twice a day. I had barely recovered, and was unable to tackle the stairs in Mumbai before leaving. She’d also started on a prophylactic course of Acetazolamide (Diamox) against mountain sickness, something I was unable to do. So I was a little surprised.

We’d set aside the first couple of days for acclimatization. We were not planning on stepping out of the hotel on the first day. We decided to go down for lunch. The restaurant was empty. It seemed that we were the only silly tourists taking these precautions. We ordered simple food. Eating multiple small meals and taking a lot of fluid is recommended. I was telling The Family that we were probably being over-cautious when a sudden headache hit me.

It became rapidly worse. I took the lift to our room, and by the time I hit the bed my fingers were tingling. The air at this height contain only about 65% of the oxygen you get at sea level. Lowered oxygen in your blood requires your heart to pump harder. If you are careless, this could lead to increased blood pressure and the risk of a heart attack. The tingling in your fingers and toes is a blaring alarm that tells you to lie down immediately. The Family took out our oxymeter, and found that I was in crisis. When you are flat on your back, the heart has a easier time pumping blood to your brain. I concentrated on yoga breathing: 4 counts in, hold for a count of 4, out till a count of 8. My pulse slowed. The tingling disappeared. A load eased off my chest. My oxygen reading crept up and my pulse rate dropped to the active workout level.

This was a wonderful hotel. Room service came in to set up bedside dining. The manager told The Family that he could set up oxygen for me any time we wanted. They contacted doctors, a couple, who were in our hotel. The owner came to talk to The Family; assured her that the hospital in Leh was fully equipped to deal with this problem, and he could get us there whenever needed. All this was in my peripheral consciousness. I kept on the yoga breathing until my oxygen and pulse were back to the extreme side of normal. Then I could sit up and eat.

I did not reach a crisis again; bodies adjust to heights. By late afternoon I could join The Family on the balcony for short periods. We had taken a full cardiac checkup before the trip. She’d been working on her blood iron levels, and it was paying off. Her vitals never went into danger. I had a slower time adjusting. The edema headache and the racing heart never happened again. It took three days before my resting oxygen level and pulse were back to the level I had at home. But once there, my body maintained that balance even at an altitude of 5500 meters. If we’d driven up from Srinagar or Manali, it would have taken as many days as it did, and I would have adjusted equally well. Also, the view would have been better. I did not save any time by flying in. Once it was clear that I was stable, The Family could explore Leh. So there was that.

Later, The Family said we should have come here thirty years ago. Perhaps we should have. Women’s bodies warn of time’s winged chariot drawing near, I don’t have that perspective. But I was immensely pleased a week later, when we crossed Khardung La a second time, and a group of young men watching us from the top of a slope we shuffled up said that we were an inspiration to them. I could have told them that though they cannot make their sun stand still, they can yet make him run. But I was grinning inside at their compliment. And I was out of breath.

Thank you guys, you made my day. I wish I’d had your grace when I was younger.

Talking of which, here is Oxygen The Music whom I found on YouTube

Altitudes

On our first trip to Bhutan, we parked at the top of the pass called Chele La (altitude 3988 m) after a week of traveling through the country. Climbing the slopes at the sides of the pass presented no problems at all. On our second visit, we flew in to Paro and within an hour were at Chele La, huffing and puffing our way up-slope for a spot of bird watching. From this we learnt that taking time to acclimatize to heights helps us to enjoy these beautiful places better. That’s why the chart that you see on top: just a way of telling me when to take a bit of time to ease off.

Leh, the capital of Ladakh (altitude 3500 m) is among the highest towns in the world (Lhasa in Tibet is about the same height). The rest of Ladakh is a little higher. Even if you can stand heights easily, it pays to take a day or two of rest after flying in to such heights. If you drive in from Himachal Pradesh or Kashmir, then the driving time already helps you to adjust. Having just recovered from a flu, we have taken the precaution of testing our blood pressure, lungs, and hemoglobin levels. A night of rest after the flight, and we should be fit to go. Some prefer Diamox, others Coca leaves or Supari, but time and rest could be good enough to keep us going up to the highest passes in Ladakh, namely Khardung La and Chang La.

You might know that La is the word for pass in the languages of the Himalayas. So Khardung La is the same as Khardung Pass. In the same way, Tso is the word for lake, so Pangong Tso is the same as Pangong lake. I end this post with the word that means hello, goodbye and thanks in Bhoti, the language of Ladakh: ju le.

Manas National Park

The international border between Bhutan and India runs through a protected forest whose Indian side is called the Manas National Park, and the Bhutanese side is named the Royal Manas National Park. The Manas river, named after the snake goddess Manasa, forms part of the international border. We plan to travel to the Manas NP in a couple of months if we are lucky. If we are very lucky we might get to see the critically endangered Bengal Florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis), perhaps a king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), and a hispid hare (Caprolagus hispidus) or two. It is also home to elephants, wild buffalos, tigers, rhinos, golden langurs (see the featured photo), and pygmy hogs. Although these are animals we have seen before, I wouldn’t mind another view.

In 1928 the park was set aside as a wildlife reserve by a British imperial decree. This land, and the adjoining plains, were then home to the Bodo tribe. Empire is extraction (a wonderful case study of the exploitative economics of empire can be found here). The British empire cleared the plains and planted tea, forced the Orang tribe from Bihar and Bengal to migrate here to work the tea gardens, and started logging the forest, while banning “illegal” logging. The displacement of the forest tribe gave rise to a long-running slow war, on both sides of the border, the forest ecosystem was disrupted, and rhinos went extinct locally. The 2003 accord setting up a Bodo tribal area within Assam finally brought peace. Rhinos were reintroduced, and the Bodos began to take care of their forest again.

The best way to travel? I think we could fly in to Guwahati. The drive from the airport to the village of Bansbari, right outside the central zone of the park, should take about 3 hours. In a more relaxed time, one could have taken it slower in the park, and perhaps stretched the visit to a week. For us now, three days in the park, and a couple of days in travel seem to be optimal. The marginal return in terms of new species seen every day would be low after this. I have to make sure that I manage to taste the silkworm dish which is a Bodo delicacy. I last ate silkworm in China, and liked its nutty flavour.

Discovering Marianne North

While looking for books on the wildflowers of Kumaon, I came across a mention of Marianne North (b 1830, d 1890). I knew little about her although she is famous enough to have a whole gallery devoted to her paintings at the Kew Gardens. I looked at a few examples, and realized that I’d missed something very special. The Victorian age was a time when the biodiversity of the world was under great scrutiny. Charles Darwin, and Alexander von Humboldt before him, were merely the most famous of explorers. Marianne North became one of them when she journeyed twice across the world, keeping painted records of what she saw.

I don’t have the time now to get a copy of the folio of her paintings of the flowers of Kumaon before I leave on my next holiday, but it is one that I intend to get (this post is a reminder). She lived at a time when botanical illustrations were in high demand, as Europe woke to the riches of flowers from across the world. Many of today’s common garden flowers in the temperate zones of the world are wildflowers of other continents. I will see and taste whole groups of them, rhododendrons, primula, magnolia, gentian, on my travels soon. Taste too, because wildflowers are used for flavouring food in Kumaon. I’m looking forward to it.

Preparing for Jordan

I hadn’t thought of visiting Jordan until I saw a post on Jerash by Harinda Bama. Then I realized that right there in the middle of the middle east, a place so full of history, where the remnants of the European wars of a hundred years ago are still being fought, in the middle of a beautiful and once peaceful land, there is a part which is easy for tourists to visit.

There were over 4 million tourists to Jordan two years ago, and that number might have gone up to 7 million this year if it were not for COVID-19. I suppose only a small fraction of travelers blog, but that number still produces a lot of stories and opinions. I started by reading some of what wordpress has on offer: Amman’s street art, Kerak, Raqmu, also known as Petra, Wadi Musa and Little Petra, Jerash and the Cats of Amman.

This was definitely a place I wanted to visit. The Family was also interested. So I looked deeper. The first book I took up was a translation of the travel diaries of Johann ludwig Burckhardt, the man who rediscovered Raqmu (Petra) in 1812. The translation of “Travels in Syria and the Holy Land” that I had contained a very long and interesting foreword by William Martin Leake. I found this really interesting, not only for the description of the geography (it helped to keep a map with contour lines open on my laptop as I read) but also for the interesting tidbits about how accurately the Greeks and Romans had mapped this land. Raqmu need not have been lost at all.

There is quite a bit of European writing on Jordan. The most well known is “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” by Thomas Edward Lawrence. From today’s perspective one can see the broad line between Lawrence of Arabia and to the present wars in West Asia. The book is a little too verbose for my taste, but I found it interesting to skim through, pausing at bits here and there. Gertrude Bell‘s book “The Desert and the Sown” was an easier read, from a slightly earlier time, and left me with the same unsettling feeling of imperial powers meddling in local politics. As a travel book, it too has its positive points. One could add a dash of whipped cream by adding Agatha Christie’s “Appointment with Death”, not one of her best Hercule Poirot books, but one in which the murder occurs in Raqmu.

Most of the British books from the early part of the 20th century CE are imperial and racist by today’s standards, and totally ignore the post-Roman history of the area. They deal with the Ottoman Empire as a vile occupying power (an Indian finds this ironic). It was only when I started in on the next phase of reading, guide books, that I began to appreciate the modern history of the area. After some thought I chose the Blue Guide and Lonely Planet. I like Blue Guides for their detailed explanations of cultural artifacts, especially in and around Europe. Byzantine power supplanted Rome in this part of the world, until it was checked by the Umayyads and, later, Abbasids. After the brief Crusader incursion, Ayyubids and Mamluks held this land until the coming of the Ottomans. Each of these periods has left its artifacts across the land. This was a good point from which to expand my reading. I was feeling a little rushed last week, since our plan would have taken us to Raqmu today.

Now, under the new social distancing conventions, I remain in my flat. Airlines have cancelled flights, and the world has broken up into little islands. It gives me more time to read about this tiny country. I hope that when this calamity has gone, The Family and I are still able to take this cancelled trip.

The way of the world

That the earth’s axis is tilted around the plane of its orbit was known even to ancient civilizations who had no understanding that the earth moves around the sun. After all, the noontime sun moves polewards in summer and in the opposite direction in winter. As a result, days are longer in summer, and nights longer in winter. Even a layman could see that. It was also fairly easy in the temperate zones of the earth to connect these motions to four distinct seasons. This was the beginning of ancient astronomy, and its off-shoot, which is the modern calendar.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.

Hamlet (Act 2, Sc 2) William Shakespeare

But today, as the world begins another mad celebration of the arbitrariness of this calendar, and the decimal system of writing numbers (the end of the year, and, mistakenly, the end of the decade), I was moved to ask whether any special meaning could be given to a calendar. In the Elizabethan era, even as Shakespeare was writing about the fixed nature of the earth as an eternal truth, the earth was displaced from the center of the cosmos. It was realized that the earth orbits the sun, and that the sun was but one out of many stars. It was realized that the earth moves in an elliptical orbit around the sun. The difference between the long radius and the short is just about 1 percent of the radius, so this difference is not easily observed.

It remains that from the same principles we demonstrate the form of the system of the world.

Principia Mathematica (Book 3) Isaac Newton

Small it may be, but the ellipticity is there, to mark special points on the orbit: special dates of the year. There is a date when the earth is furthest from the sun, and one when it is the closest. Between January 3 and 4 the earth comes closest to the sun. I will mark the beginning of a new orbit around the sun, a new year, on the coming Friday. How great a coincidence it is that this will come 12 days after the birthday of Isaac Newton, the man who understood that the reason for a ripe apple falling from a tree is the same as that which forces the orbit of the earth to be an ellipse. And what is special about the coming year is that it ends the 4th century after Johannes Kepler’s discovery (by 1619 CE) of the laws of planetary motion; that’s not the end of a decade, it is the end of the century. 2020 CE may as well be called 401 Keplerian Era.

Milan in May?

“What about Milan during your holidays?” I asked The Family. It took some time to argue her around to this. She preferred the Himalayas. I don’t mind the Himalayas either, but my main argument was different. I had to get a visa for some work in any case, and the process of getting a visa is so tedious that I might as well plan several things together to make it worthwhile. The Family caught an important point instantly, “So you aren’t going to be here in May?” I told her I could be back after just a short business trip if she wanted.

I’ve spent only a couple of hours in Milan. That was just enough time to take a look at the cathedral, climb to its roof (featured photo), and walk around nearby. Now The Family and I took at look at what one can do in Milan if one has a few days. As always in Italy, there are Roman remains and impressive palaces, wonderful art collections and food. And then in Milan one has design and fashion. The Family was convinced. Now I have to make a plan for a four day trip. My first impression is that this is really short. What does one leave out and still get the essence of Milan?

I hope it is not too late to book a visit to Santa Maria delle Grazie to look at Leonardo’s Last Supper. If one goes to see the cathedral then La Scala and Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II is nearby. Pinacoteca di Brera, Biblioteca Ambrosiana and Sforza Castle seem to be unmissable. Shouldn’t one also see the mosaics in Basilica di San Lorenzo? It is beginning to get complicated. Please wish me luck.

A Summer of Tigers

Spain has lodged in my imagination since I read Pablo Neruda as a teenager, and was led through him to the Spanish poets Quevedo and Garcia Lorca. Before that was an exposure to the painters Goya and Velazquez, and then, inevitably, Picasso. So when I found I had to attend a meeting in Spain, I thought we could make a longer trip. The Family agreed.

En el fondo del pecho estamos juntos,
en el cañaveral del pecho recorremos
un verano de tigres,
al acecho de un metro de piel fría,
al acecho de un ramo de inaccesible cutis,
con la boca olfateando sudor y venas verdes
nos encontramos en la húmeda sombra que deja caer besos.

In the bottom of our hearts we are together,
In the cane field of the heart
A summer of tigers,
Lurking in a meter of cold skin,
Lurking in a bunch of untouchable skin,
With the mouth smelling of sweat and green veins
We are in the wet shadow that rains kisses.

Pablo Neruda, Furies and Sufferings

The easiest question to answer is “Will it rain in Spain?” In June it’s unlikely, unless you are in Bilbao. The temperature, on the other hand, is harder to discuss: between 26 and 18 Celcius in Barcelona, an average variation between 29 and 13 Celcius in Madrid and Granada. I was surprised that Seville could swing as high as 32 Celcius. It sounds much more comfortable than Delhi and Mumbai in the last couple of months.

The Family and I discussed what we associated most strongly with Spain. The one thing I definitely want to do is to visit the Prado in Madrid and see the painting called Las Meninas by Velazquez (picture below). The Family is looking forward to the Miro collection in Barcelona.

We ruled out bull fights; not our cup of blood. Football is definitely on the cards. We watch the football World Cups fairly regularly, but don’t watch club matches. Still, we will try to see a game.

Carlos Saura’s movies, Flamenco and Carmen are stuck in our memories. A little reading told us that Seville or Granada are likely to be best for Flamenco, although Madrid as the capital will also attract talent. We’ll try all of them. We have to start looking for tickets.

Madrid and not Barcelona? Not possible; it’s the city of Picasso, Miro and Dali, and also city of Gaudi, Cadafalch and Muntaner. We agreed that it would be a great place to spend a few days walking around and enjoying the Tapas and Vermouth. A cousin who used to go for meetings in Spain every few weeks told us that there are more pickpockets in Barcelona than in Madrid. This turns out to be widely reported. There is even a guide on how to report thefts to the police. There are warnings about taxis in Barcelona as well. This begins to sound like Delhi. We do enjoy Delhi in spite of many problems.

Crocodiles, herons and turtles

In a couple of weeks I have to fly to Odisha for work. I talked to The Family about taking the following weekend off. With a little juggling, it turned out that she can also travel that weekend. We’ve spent 40 days without seeing an animal wilder than a crow or a pigeon, so we decided to make this a quick wildlife trip.

A look at the map shows us that Odisha is full of national parks. There is a lot of choice in principle. Our main constraint is that this has to be a quick trip. The only airport in Odisha is in Bhubaneswar, and to save time we want to travel no more than three hours. This narrows our options to Chilka lake and Bhitarkanika National Park (highlighted in the map above).

We spent a day and a half in Chilka lake a few years ago, watching freshwater dolphins. We’ve also been thinking of going back there for a spot of winter bird watching. Mangalajodi has become the glam destination for birders, with articles being written about it in The Guardian and Livemint. The conversion of poachers into bird guides is certainly a very romantic story. Another reason why it is written about so much is that in winter even a novice can spot lots of birds. But this is late in the season, and the winter’s avian visitors would have begun to depart.

So we begin to think of Bhitarkanika National Park. This is a wetland protected under the Ramsar convention. The big two here are saltwater crocodiles and Olive Ridley sea turtles. These endangered turtles return to the nearby Gahiramatha beach every year to breed. The discovery and subsequent protection of this, the world’s largest breeding site for the turtles, is one of India’s success stories. A newspaper article tells us that they have already arrived this year. I can’t find any information about whether it is possible to see the nesting of these turtles.

Saltwater crocodiles are a constant tourist draw in Bhitarkanika, so there is an efficient process to visit the places where they can be seen. A little reading assures me that we will be able to see them.

The Family asks about bird watching. I find a two-year old fluff piece on bird watching in Bhitarkanika. A little more searching brings up the definitive checklist of the birds of this wetland. In a two-year long survey, conducted a decade ago, two dedicated and talented naturalists, Gopi and Pandav, found 263 bird species in the area, of which 147 were residents. I learnt from this paper that the park hosts one of the largest heronries in the world. A heronry is a tree, a group of trees, an island, or an inaccessible area where herons breed year after year. During breeding season, which is about now, it is a spectacular sight.

We know nothing about local conditions, have no contact with local experts in Bhitarkanika National Park. We might be lucky and see lots of things, or we might not. But it seems like a place worth visiting.

What can one do in cold Chicago?

I don’t visit Chicago very often, maybe once in a decade. So there’s a lot of this lively city which I haven’t seen. Now that I have to spend a week there on work, I’m trying to figure out what I can take the time out to see.

The first step: recall what I’ve seen already. The one thing I remember most clearly is a wonderful dinner in Greek Town. At the end of the long dinner I wanted to taste the house-made baklava. I pleaded with the waiter to give me a small piece because I was too full to eat the normal serving, but I was told it was not possible. I got a full large helping, which I had to bag to eat at breakfast in the airport the next day. It’s such a great memory that I don’t want to go back and find something different.

The next thing I definitely remember is the Art Institute. I wandered through it once looking at the incredible collection of Mesoamerican and Andean art. That was the first time I’d seen such a variety of art from this part of the world. I don’t think I’ve seen such a collection ever since then. I might go back to look at it.

It is 33 degrees in Mumbai today, and I see that it is 3 degrees below freezing right now in Chicago! Even if I’m bundled up well, I’m afraid I might find it a little too cold for a few things: walking the lakefront trail, for example. I haven’t seen Anish Kapoor’s "Cloud Gate" (photo above), or Magdalena Abakanowicz’s "Agora". I hope I can acclimatize enough to go see at least one of these pieces of sculpture.

I do plan to visit the Ledge at Sear’s Tower. I’m sure it’ll be fun comparing this experience with standing on the viewing platform of the World Financial Centre in Shanghai.

While browsing for attractions I found a link to the Chicago Pedway. This sounds so quirky that I want to walk through this. I guess this list more than fills up the few spare hours I might have. Is there anything else which I could do?