Wayne Ingram:  

One of my long held dreams has been to be able go to the Himalayan Mtns. and at least be able to take a week long trek. In Dec. of 2006 that opportunity presented itself and resulted in an interesting story to tell. I was asked to speak at a technical conference in Noida, India. Noida is a business district near New Dehli. The truth is that I volunteered to go to India earlier in the year and when the planning process was started, one of the managers remembered my interest. Once it was all approved, I then was asked to speak at the conference. During the planning stages I discussed with my wife Brenda that I wanted to plan a trek in Northern India, Ladakh to be specific. Ladakh is a region in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which borders Tibet on the east and Pakistan on the west. It sets between the Himalayan Mtns. to the south and the Kunlun Mtns to the north. My plan was to hire a guide and trek in this area for a week. My original plan was to go to the conference during the second week of December and then trek during the third week of December. However, since it was going to be close to Christmas when I returned, Brenda asked me to swap weeks and trek the week before the conference. You may be thinking at this point in the story that going to the Himalayas in December is a bad idea. Let me clear some things up for you though. Mt. Everest, for example, is very close in latitude to Tampa, Florida. When you trek to Everest Base Camp, you have to hike through a very warm climate, similar to central Florida. The cold weather there is a function of the altitude in the mountains and the effect that the mountain ranges have on the local climate. So my expectation was that Ladakh would be cold, but not severe. The first part of my trip was from Greenville, SC to Chicago. I worked all day in a cubicle at the airport in Chicago(O'hare). We left for New Dehli on a 6 p.m. flight from O'hare and flew all night to New Dehli. I did not sleep on the flight. We arrived in New Dehli around 9:30 p.m. local time. After maneuvering through the airport in New Dehli, I finally found the guide service with the "Welcome Wayne Ingram" placard held up for me to see. One thing to note was that all of the airport security were Indian military, with officers equipped with sidearms and soldiers carrying automatic weapons. The guide service had made reservations at a hotel in New Dehli for me, but it turned out that the driver they had hired did not know where it was. After driving through some interesting parts of town, we finally found the hotel, at 11:30 p.m. I got checked in and went up to my room. I pulled out my water treatment equipment, ran some water into a Nalgene bottle and treated it so that I would have water to brush my teeth. The guides were going to pick me up at 5:00 a.m. for my flight into Ladakh, so I headed to bed. I didn't sleep any at all that night, but the excitement of seeing the Himalayas the next morning kept me going. The next mornings flight was incredible. It was phenomenal flying over the highest mountain range in the world. We landed at the town of Leh, Ladakh at 8:00 a.m. The weather was perfect, just only 18 degrees F in the morning and the sky was as blue as you can imagine. The guide service picked me up and took me to my hotel. This is where things started getting interesting. We had to wait for the owner of the hotel to "open" it, so we stood outside and talked for about an hour. I asked the guides how many tourists were in Leh at this time of year and they answered "you". As I looked at the hotel, I noticed cisterns on the roof and realized that they had a gravity feed system for running water. I also realized that since it was 18 degrees, that there would not be any water in the cisterns, so there would not be any running water. Leh is at an altitude of 10,500 feet. Once the hotel was unlocked, I was introduced to the employee that was going to take care of me there. He was a very quite guy who ended up cooking all of my meals, provide hot water for bathing and a kerosene heater for my room. The guides gave me the rest of the day to relax and recover from my travels. I was able to sleep for about 2 hours. I ate some lunch and then went out and walked around the town of Leh. One thing I noticed was that everyone had cell phones. As I looked around I noticed electrical wires laying in what we would call the gutter alongside the street. Now I knew why the power didn't work at night during the winter time. It looked like someone had gone to Lowe's or Home Depot, bought a roll of 14 gauge, 3 conductor wire and hooked up their home or business to the local power provider. It became quite evident that this part of the world did not have the infrastructure that we take for granted here. There was no telephone service, limited electrical power, limited water service and no real sewer system. Still, the area was very intriguing. I was glad to be there. Later in the afternoon I went back to the hotel and tried to nap, however I wasn't able to. As the sun went down and I looked out of my windows, I realized that the only lights I saw in the valley were from the cell phone towers. That was it, no one had lights on in their homes or businesses. The lights in my hotel room were intermittent at best and once the sun was down they were non-existent. I was glad that I had brought reliable trekking gear. As the evening wore on, I could not sleep, and I started having bad headaches. Sometime during the night I tried to call home and talk to my wife. However, the cell phone signal I had only lasted long enough for me to dial and then it would drop the service whenever it started to connect. I was feeling pitiful by now and I really wanted to talk to my wife. Then all of the Indian food that I had eaten that day decided it no longer wanted to remain in my stomach. I was up the rest of the night vomiting. At around 7:00 a.m. the guides came to get me for the trek. I was feeling very bad by this time and told them about my night. They had a serious look...Expand for more