From Dhaka to Achham

I’ve finally arrived in Achham after quite a bit of traveling.

The last couple days in Dhaka went by rather quickly. We had a couple more meetings at the ICDDR,B before I left that went well enough. The last couple nights, Maia’s family made a big feast to see me off. The food was delicious. Then, Monday morning, I woke up early to go to the airport and get on my way.

To get to KTM, I flew Biman, which is the national airline of Bangladesh. It was about a 100-150 person Jet, though maybe ¼ of the seats were full. The flight was fine, but the plane was not very clean, and there was gum caked in the pouch in front of my seat. It did not matter too much though because the plane left relatively on time (about 20 minutes late) and landed in KTM after about an hour flight.

In the airport I met up with Laura who is also from Tufts Globemed interning at Nyaya this summer. We then met our driver who took us the rest of the way to the hotel. Kathmandu (KTM) in definitely a different city than Bangladesh. The buildings are not as tall, and they are much more sporadically spaced, but they give the city a certain character. Driving was mostly the same- a total free for all, and it was almost as hot as Dhaka though it had a slight breeze. The hotel we were staying at was called Hotel Ambassador, and was a affordable, yet comfortable place near some of the touristy parts of the city.

After setting our things down at the hotel, Laura and I went out and explored some of the city by foot. We went to this place called Thamel which is a major tourist location. It was filled with all different sorts of souvenir stores, alternating with hiking and climbing stores. Thamel is a major location for people to go to before they begin Treks or climbs in Nepal, and the shops were filled with hiking boots and northface jackets. We ate lunch at a restaurant called New Orleans, which had a very ex-pat vibe, and spent most of the day exploring.

The streets of Thamel

In the evening, back at the hotel, we met up with Nyaya’s KTM administrator Pradip. He brought us some Nepali Rupees that we could use as spending money, and we chatted while taking tea for a couple hours on topics ranging from Nepali culture to the US presidential election. He then brought us on a quick tour of the city showing us a few of the temples. It was dark out though, so we would definitely like to check them out again at the end of the trip.

The next day we woke up early to meet Pradip once more so he could drop off a box of insulin for us to take to the hospital with us. We ate a large breakfast at the hotel before heading to the airport to leave for the far western district of the country. The domestic airport was pretty small so we were able to get through it without difficulty. We were flying Yeti Air, one of two local airlines that send flights out to Dhangadi which is the closest airport to Achham.  The plane was a small one with only 30 seats, and propellers. The first plane we boarded had technical difficulties so we had to switch, but it only took them a few minutes to move our luggage over and we were on our way.

The plane ride was a little bumpy owing to the fact that the plane was just so small. There were some refreshments on the flight- soda, water, peanuts, etc… that were distributed by the one flight attendant. Soon after getting to the top of the cloud level, we looked out our window and saw to the north, the tips of mountains passing through the clouds. There are some pictures below but they do not capture just how incredible it was to see something so large and tall. After about an hour we landed in Dhangadi.

Dhangadi was probably the smallest airport I have ever passed through. It has a paved runway which was nice, but aside from that there was one small terminal, but we did not exit through it. We walked off the plane and through a gate to the front of the building where our luggage was dropped off on a hand cart. After waiting for a few minutes, the jeep arrived and we started our long drive.

Mountains above the clouds

We drove out to Achham with Ranju, who used to run the community health worker program for Nyaya. She went to Mount Holyoke for her undergrad, before coming back to Nepal where she grew up. She was great company on the trip that ended up lasting about 9 hours of straight driving.

The road started out pretty smooth, but before long we were driving up a twisting mountain road filled with sharp turns and steep slopes. Fortunately, most of the road was paved so while it was a bumpy ride, it could have been much worse. We left at about 3:30 and we did not arrive at the hospital until around 12:30 at night. Our driver was great, and managed to get us there in better time than most trips (Sindya, a Tufts med student who we are also here with came about a week ago and her drive took roughly 13 hours). We pulled into the hospital and were greeted by some of the other staff and interns here before being led to our rooms. My bed was essentially a slap of wood with a sheet on top that I will have to get used to, but I was so tired from the trip that I fell right to sleep.

A typical view out of the jeep window

Today was the first day at the hospital, but this post is already too long so I will try and get some of the details of what it is like here posted tomorrow.

Also, be sure to check out the Globemed blog that I will also be writing while here. Some of the material will be the same, but there will be a couple other people writing there, and some different posts about our work and the work of Nyaya. There is also a page where you can submit questions, and we will try to answer them when we have internet.