I finally got my first leech, well, my first
leeches. I was particularly unlucky on this hike we took where I got 6 all in
one day. I probably would have been able to avoid getting some of them, but our
group was told that the hike was short – 45 min there and 30 back and only a
total of 5 km – and so I didn’t take as many precautions as I would for a
longer hike. I decided to wear my keens (sandals/hiking shoes mix) because I
heard that we’d be stopping by a waterfall on the way up and didn’t want to
deal with getting my hiking boots soaking wet (and, besides, it was only going
to be just over an hour, right?).
Turns out the hike was much longer
than expected. It took us 5 hours to complete the entire thing and none of us
were prepared. Some people had only brought a little bit of water and no one
had any snacks. We did have some steripens to use at the waterfall, but even
then the waterfall was relatively early in the hike and we didn’t fill up our
water bottles like we should have. This is where I got 4 of the 6 leeches,
probably because my feet weren’t adequately bug sprayed/covered with hiking
boots. I must say that as disgusting as leeches are, I would take them over
ticks or mosquitoes any time. For one thing, they are very easy to spot because
of their relatively large size. Secondly, they are totally painless and don’t
leave me scratching for weeks after they bite me. Finally, they are super easy
to remove and they don’t carry nasty diseases like ticks do. I think everyone
in our group has gotten a leech at this point and we’re all pros at dealing
with them.
When we finally did reach the
temple to which we were hiking (four hours later), we bought tons of junk food at
a vendor nearby and had chai (also, I discovered I had 2 more leeches, but
that’s beside the point). I don’t even want to think about how many chips and
cookies I had up there, but I must admit I did discover which of them I liked
and which ones I didn’t like so much (Funday puffs are superb, but Tasty Nuts
aren’t actually all that tasty). We initially bought a couple of bags of chips
and a sleeve or two of cookies, but we quickly devoured those and kept going
back to buy more. I like to think that we were motivated to keep buying more to
stimulate the local economy, but really it was just 7 exceptionally hungry
teenagers and 1 really hungry Caleb-ji that kept the shopkeepers busy.
The craziest thing is that our
guide had taken us on this super circuitous route up the mountain and then it
only took us about an hour to get back down to Jageshwar. Now, we’ve had a
couple of run-ins with this “India Time.” While here we quickly learned that
“meet at 7:00 AM” really meant “be ready by 7:15 AM” and “dinner at 7:30”
really meant “dinner sometime between 8:00 and 8:30.” In some ways it’s nice
because I’m not so concerned with hyper-punctuality, but sometimes I feel like
we are wasting huge amounts of time. As a whole, our group has taken very well
to being consistently unpunctual and the last person to be ready constantly
changes.
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