Day 1 in Leh: No porters for the reporters

The first morning in Ladakh, doctors say, can be a bit tricky. Especially if the plan is to spend three weeks at extreme altitudes and climbing glaciers. Fortunately, none of the 30 odd civilian participants of the Siachen trek team woke up with the tell tale signs of mountain sickness. The only thing that made hearts race a bit faster was the first hurdle to getting onto the highest battlefield in the world – the battery of medical tests and physical fitness examinations.

These, our team leader, assured us, would be the deciding factor to our moving on the Siachen base camp – a day’s drive from Leh – for the training phase. The trick, a veteran mountaineer told us, was to keep the Blood Pressure under control. Another crucial test – one which sounded more like a chemical formula – being the SPO2 level that measures the oxygen level in the blood. All went fine on the first day but these tests and a more severe physical fitness examination will go on for the next seven days till the Army doctors are totally certain that our bodies can take on the rigours of the glacier.

With reason too, as all casualties on the glacier in the past six years have been due to medical reasons. While not a single shot has been fired since the 2003 ceasefire, the biggest enemy remains the biting cold and hostile terrain. With an average of 10 medical evacuations per month – anything as simple as a bad headache or broken tooth can be fatal at extreme temperatures – only the fittest of soldiers are posted on the glacier.

While the expedition team will go through a 14 day acclimatisation program, soldiers that have to guard the icy heights of the Saltoro ridge spend close to three months getting trained and acclimatized before stepping on the glacier. As a rule, no solider can spend more than 3 months on the glacier itself. After that, the temporary memory loss suffered at heights of over 18,000 feet can turn permanent. The common belief amongst soldiers is that an average posting on the glacier takes away 5 years from the lifespan.

Hearing such stories about the glacier – and some more about man’s fight with the extreme terrain (that will be shared on this blog at a later date) – would have put back members of the civilian expedition a bit but what came at the end of a first day briefing was more of a shocker.

After being explained that the trek would involve extreme climbing of 15 kms per day, a kindly officer told us that unlike last year, there would be no porters on the trek this time around. ‘No porters for reporters”, as he explained, was meant to give the media a more realistic view of the army’s experience on the glacier!!