Not all those who wander are lost

Not all those who wander are lost

<a href="http://jjamwal.in/wanderings/a-walk-to-nowhere-in-spiti/">Previous post: </a>

I woke up at around 4:30 and went out of tent to find Jamaica was back. He had brought back some supplies was with him and was busy putting them away. As we chatted over a cup of tea, a guide came up and said that a foreign tourist had fallen sick and needed medical care. Turned out that a large group of tourists were doing the Zanskar to Spiti trek and one of them was showing symptoms of high altitude sickness. We had no means of contacting anyone except for one satellite phone in Batal. Just about then, a few locals from some place near Kaza came back from the lake and started to leave in their Maruti 800. The stupid guide, instead of sending the sick tourist  back to Batal in their car, hopped in himself and went away before we had the chance to say anything.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="480"]<a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-LDkutTwZIdU/UFr0lOBywrI/AAAAAAAAAlU/GbqIbFZ8ehI/s800/IMG_4512-1.JPG"><img class=" " title="Camp site" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-LDkutTwZIdU/UFr0lOBywrI/AAAAAAAAAlU/GbqIbFZ8ehI/s800/IMG_4512-1.JPG" alt="Camp site" width="480" height="320" /></a> Camp site[/caption]

As we had no information of their location or means to help, we could only hope that th guide would be able to call up an ambulance. As I had already explore much of the area and didn't have enough time to do anything else, I just stayed in the camp.  Jamaica is an interesting guy and it was fun listening to his stories. Did a bit of cleaning up of the camp site by picking up the trash. I wish the rules related to littering and environment protection were more strictly implemented.<!--more-->

Anyhow, nothing really remarkable happened otherwise and I had dinner and packed up all of my stuff which was going back with me.  Waking up next morning, I was again tempted to go out to have a 'little walk' around the place but checked myself. No taxi, private car etc came up for a long time, so I just chatted with Jamaica and and some shepherds. After a while, 3 guys came up, one of them a guide from one of the camps down the road. Rest were staff from an ambulance service which the guide had called up. The driver was unable to negotiate the sharp curves and had left the ambulance back there to came up by foot. For record, you can dial 1608 to call for an ambulance there.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="384"]<a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Qa1oDgz0Pr0/UFr0yYSD1UI/AAAAAAAAAls/VEg9mmN-bns/s640/IMG_4566-1.JPG"><img class=" " title="Batal" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Qa1oDgz0Pr0/UFr0yYSD1UI/AAAAAAAAAls/VEg9mmN-bns/s640/IMG_4566-1.JPG" alt="Batal" width="384" height="256" /></a> Batal[/caption]