The first day of our backpacking trip we arrived at our camping location a little bit later than I would’ve liked. We were exhausted from the backpacking and were anxiously racing to set up our camp before dark. The trails going through the Himalayas are a little bit like highways in the United States. They are not major thoroughfares, but they are important commerce routes all the same, and along the way there are always little towns to buy gas or get refreshments. This is what the trails are used for in the Himalayas. They are the “highways” of the mountainous northern regions of India, and they provide the only route for commerce to occur throughout this region. On the first day on this trail we actually pass through a small “town”, and the head geologist advised us to buy the chai tea being sold in stalls along the trail in these towns, and to drink it copiously to avoid dehydration while hiking.
Because these mountain trails are deemed vital by the Indian government and considered a “national resource” for commerce, at times we met India military personnel who were moving along the trail to provide security more or less like the cavalry in Western United States during the 1800s. In fact, topographic maps were considered a “security threat” by the military personnel and were contraband. If you had one (and we did) you could be arrested and placed in prison as a security threat to India. Also along these trails were little huts, houses, and buildings apparently set up just for shelter for people traveling on the trails. It was at one of these building complexes that we camped the first night. There was a small platoon of military personnel who had arrived there first, and they had claimed the best buildings to sleep in (two of the three). We were left with a small building that we used for cooking, and about half of our group was able to sleep in there. The rest of us had to set up our tents out on the grass. There were two flat grassy areas rendered flat by the use of hand constructed retaining walls, and it was these two small grassy side yards that the rest of us crowded in setting up our tents. I had brought a small one person backpacking tent, but for most of the trip I used one of the larger tents that the head geologist had brought from the University. That’s what I was using this first night, and I got the tent set up pretty quickly and ready to go. I have learned from some dubious experiences that it’s always best to leave your tent completely zipped up when you’re not in it, so I zipped the whole thing up and went over to be with the rest of the group milling around waiting for our first extraordinarily spicy hot, mouth burning hot, sinus and eye watering hot trail dinner. It was the first of two weeks’ worth of so-spicy-that-you-can’t-even-taste-it meals that I was about to endure. This is how all Asian food is prepared in India and Pakistan, and the British (including the head geologist) seem to like it this way as well. (Of course, they are also known to wander around in the noon day sun with mad dogs.) The rest of us just endured it.
After dinner, I needed to use my water purifier to pump more water – with a dinner like that you can understand why. I went up to the backside of the upper building and found the head geologist with the young lawyer of Pakistani descent at the water spigot. They were pumping water and cleaning off his boot – or that’s what it looked like. But when I got closer I could see there was blood everywhere. His sock was drenched in blood, the boot was bloody, and there was blood all over his leg. They were in the process of trying to find out where the wound was. Did he have blisters from the first day of hiking? Did he cut his leg on rocks? They had his boot off and were in the process of taking off the sock when I came up, but there was no wound. No blisters, no cuts, no sores – nothing. His foot seems just fine and the blood seem to come from nowhere. I told them about the leach that had turned up on my boot earlier that afternoon, and after a bit more examining and discussion, we decided that must’ve been the problem. And I remember that the head geologist who had been to the Indian Himalayas on multiple occasions was quite surprised to hear about the leeches. And if it hadn’t been for the passing comment of a trekker coming down from the mountains while we were in the mountain resort before we left the day before, the lead geologist may not have believed what I had told him about the leach that afternoon. But the trekker when he found out where we were going, had said, “Be careful of the leeches,” and we all thought that he was trying to psych us out. Turns out he wasn’t.
The head geologist hadn’t wanted anybody to know about the bloody boot ordeal that the lawyer had. I think he was concerned with panic control among his group, but he did go down and make and in formal announcement passing the word in small groups for people to watch out for leeches. Well I certainly didn’t want to have a bloody little event like that, so before I went to bed I sat in my tent with my feet just out the door and examined my boots carefully. And as I examined, to my astonishment I found leach after leach on my boots! I was quite grateful to the porter who had helped me understand what to look for, because the little boogers were worked into seams and crevices and in around the laces, such that if you didn’t look carefully you’d never know they were on your boots. And of course everyone is taking their boots into their tent with them – it was already raining; nobody was going to leave their boots out in the rain. Well what was I going to do to get the little boogers off? It was late, it was dark, it was raining, I was getting wet, and I was really, really tired. I didn’t want to put up with leeches. I just wanted to go to bed and now here I was with my feet and legs hanging out of the tent getting wet while I sat there trying to figure out what to do about the leeches on my boots. I had no idea how to get them off. I didn’t have tweezers to pull them off and it would’ve been really difficult to try and pry them out of their hiding spots in my laces with a pocket knife blade and a flashlight.
And then it came to me – the salt! I brought salt! I got out my little Morton salt shaker and put just a dash of salt on each one, and lo and behold they began to squirm and flip and flop and come out of their hiding places and fall off of my boots and curl up and die! I was never so elated to kill something in my entire life! I salted them one by one until I was fairly sure that I had them all off. Then I took my boots off and inspected them very closely under the flashlight to make sure I got them all. Finally I put my boots in the tent and started the inspection on my socks especially around the top. The socks were free of leeches so I took them off and started looking around the inside of my pants trousers. They look good so I took off my pants, turn the wet legs inside out, and inspected them again. Finally I brought them into the tent and zipped it up. It was a 20 or 30 minute process, and it turns out I had to do it every night in the rain (it rained every night) to make sure I didn’t bring any of the little boogers into my tent. This may seem like a bit of an ordeal to go through, but let me tell you – it was worth it!
In the morning I was awakened by screams and frenzy. I got up and got dressed quickly to go over to the other yard and see what the commotion was. When I got there it was a bloody mess! One of the ladies on the trip was still in her tent in a state of confusion. There was blood smeared all over the inside of her tent, there was blood smeared all over her sleeping bag. She had long underwear that she had been sleeping in and she was covered with blood. She was frantic. A couple of the other girls were helping her go over her body looking for cuts or bruises or sores but there weren’t any… and so they began concentrating on trying to find the leeches. I don’t recall that they found any. The bloody little boogers made good their escape sometime during the night or when the tent was opened in the morning. And she wasn’t the only one. Two other people were dealing with bloody tents and sleeping gear as well, not quite as bloodied up as the first lady, but still quite a bloody little mess. It was an eye-opening experience. Little did I know that the following night I was going to set two leach records for the entire trip as nominated by my geology compadres.
Next week: And the one with the most leeches is… Me.