Monday, September 22, 2008 (Day 1)

I arrived in New Delhi on American Airlines Flight 292 from Chicago, completing the first leg of my journey to the recently discovered crashsite in Arunachal Pradesh, where my uncle and his seven crewmates were killed on January 25, 1944. I am the only member of my family to visit India in 65 years, my MIA (missing in action) uncle, US Army Air Force 1st Lt. Irwin Zaetz, having been the first one. A car from the hotel picked me up at the airport and took me to my hotel, in the downtown Karol Bagh district, which is a busy commercial area. (Later on, I learned that this area of New Delhi had been victimized by murderous jehadi terror bombings only a few days before.) Although the area is kind of poor, the room in the hotel is very nice – the Presidential Suite. On the way to the hotel, I saw a number of cows in the street – there was even a bull. I could have reached through the window of the car and touched its horns, it was so close. I also saw a rat cross the street ahead of us.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 (Day 2)

After checking out of the hotel, I took a Jet Lite flight from New Delhi to Dibrugarh, a city in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. Dibrugarh is actually only a few miles from Chabua, the destination of my uncle’s plane nicknamed “Hot as Hell” when it disappeared. I was met by my guide Oken Tayeng at the Dibrugarh airport. Oken was the one who brought the first American, businessman/mountain climber Clayton Kuhles, to see the crash site, in December 2006. He is also the owner of an adventure travel agency named Abor Country Travels and Expeditions, which takes tourists to all parts of Arunachal Pradesh for ecotourism trips. From the airport, Oken took me, with a driver and video cameraman, in his Indian Scorpio SUV to a tea plantation in the town of Margherita, Assam, to stay the night. The estate is managed by a friend of Oken named Baldeep “Billy” Singh. The bungalow where Billy and his wife Alka live is more like a mansion than a bungalow. He and Alka were extraordinarily friendly and gracious, serving Oken, the videographer, the driver, and me beer, coffee, snacks, drinks, dinner, and dessert. The food was fantastic! Billy told us that he had an uncle in the RAF – Ajeet Singh – who disappeared during World War II in the China-Burma-India theater while flying a British-made Hawker Hurricane fighter plane.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 (Day 3)

There was a big thunderstorm during the night. I only slept a few hours but woke up feeling refreshed. Since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I read some parts of a book that my host Billy owns and that he recommended to me – “The Burma Road, ” a book about the building of the Burma Road during World War II. We then ate a light breakfast, said our goodbyes to Billy (Alka was still asleep) and departed Margherita for the ferry that would take us and our car across the Brahmaputra River. On the way to the ferry landing, we ate a very nice meal of Indian pan bread, and a vegetable omelet at a roadside restaurant. After making our way through roads filled with cows, bicycles, motorscooters, and large trucks and buses – avoiding them seemed like playing an especially hazardous video game – we arrived at the ferry landing, only to discover that the next ferry would be three hours from now. So Oken decided that we should drive to a different landing which, hopefully, would have a ferry leaving much sooner in the day. We arrived at the other landing about noontime, and after an hour’s wait in the hot noonday sun (there was hardly a cloud in the sky) we boarded the motorized ferry boat, which was probably only about 30 feet long. Oken and I sat on the bow of the boat, discussing the trip and looking at the broad Brahmaputra’s muddy water.

In the far distance, we could make out dimly the mountains of Arunachal Pradesh – not towering peaks really, rather, rounded at the top, but still high. When the ferry got to the other side of the river, after an hour or so, we disembarked the same way we embarked, on a narrow wooden plank set up between the boat the embankment – on both sides of the river there was no real dock as such. After we walked off the boat, our driver attempted to get our 4-wheel-drive SUV off. That’s when our troubles started. The SUV was driven to the embankment over two temporarily placed wooden planks. As soon as the driver got the SUV partially on to the embankment, its front wheels got stuck in the sand. After some maneuvering, our driver finally got the vehicle completely onto the beach, drove it about 25 yards, and then the vehicle got stuck again in the sand, this time even deeper than before. It took the ferry boat workers about a half-hour of digging and pushing to get the Scorpio on its way again.

We were still in Assam, which adjoins Arunachal Pradesh. After some time riding in very bumpy, unpaved roads, I fell asleep in the SUV. When I woke up, it was dark, the SUV was stopped, and Oken was asking me for my passport. We had finally arrived in Arunachal! I felt a huge sense of relief that I had finally reached the area of India where my uncle lost his life, an area I had studied intensively, even obsessively, over the last year. A large gate faced us, announcing in English that we were entering Pasighat, the capital of one of Arunachal’s districts, East Siang. I was still concerned at this point that my Restricted Area Permit might be rescinded at the last minute, preventing my entry into the region. But fortunately, that was not the case. After a brief discussion between Oken and the frontier guard, we were permitted to proceed.

We stayed that night at the Hotel Aane, in downtown Pasighat. Before going to bed, our video cameraman, a Nishi tribal named Katung, found an Internet café near the hotel, and I sent a quick e-mail to my family letting them know that I had reached Pasighat and was fine.

Thursday, September 25, 2008 (Day 4)

In the morning, I woke up to discover that the power was out in the hotel room. Fortunately, I had brought a camp lantern, so I turned it on to see better. Early that morning, we left Pasighat, traveling north up a winding mountain road to our next destination, the town of Yingkiong, the district of Upper Siang. The weather, which was rainy early that morning, cleared up quickly and the driving conditions turned out to be fine. The road hugged the western bank of the broad Siang River, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, and we climbed higher and higher into the mountains. The scenery along the way was truly spectacular. We stopped several times to take pictures at various locations overlooking the lush Siang river valley. After a while, we stopped near a footbridge spanning the river- it had to be one of the longest footbridges in the world. The bottom of the footbridge was constructed completely of bamboo, while the sides were reinforced with metal cable. Oken, Katung, and I walked to the middle of the footbridge, which was at least a hundred feet above the river. I was rather nervous about doing this, but I went ahead anyway. After taking video and pictures, we returned to the bank. However, along the way back, I cut one of my fingers pretty badly on the metal side-railing. After getting off the bridge, Oken found and crushed a wildflower known to have medicinal properties and applied it to the cut, stopping the bleeding in almost no time at all. We got back on the increasingly twisty road, passing through several small villages. Finally, toward sunset, we arrived at Yingkiong, a small town high above the banks of the Siang in Upper Siang district. There, I stayed at a guest house owned by Oken’s brother, Atul Tayeng, a government official in Yingkiong. That evening, I dined with Atul and a friend of his from the Northeast Indian state of Nagaland. It turned out that Atul had recently returned from an academic tour of the Eastern US, where he studied community organization. The three of us, over drinks, had a very wide-ranging conversation, covering such topics as ethnicity, terrorism, religion, US-India relations, the future of India’s Northeast, and American politics. Atul mentioned to me that a common misconception among non-Americans is that there is no sense of local “community” in the US, that everybody is a stranger to everybody else. I agreed with him that this notion was very flawed, that local community feelings were in fact quite strong in the US, centering in large part on churches, neighborhoods, and sports loyalties.

Friday, September 26, 2008 (Day 5)

I awoke the next morning to find the weather to be quite misty. But when the mist cleared, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the vista I could see from the back port of Atul’s guest house: far below, the broad, winding Siang River; on the far bank, towering mountains covered with lush greenery; on the near bank – gently rolling farmland near the river and more mountains. Without doubt this had to be one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth.

We left Atul’s house in Yingkiong, our Scorpio climbing higher into the mountains, on one-lane, twisting, unpaved roads. At two points that day, we got stuck in very muddy parts of the road, but Oken managed to get us out, with the assistance of his crew.

Early in the afternoon, we arrived in the Abor village of Damroh, our base camp and Oken’s ancestral village, which is located at about 4000 feet above sea level. He parked the SUV next to a large thatched hut owned by his uncle, a fairly tall man of 58 with gray goatee and eyeglasses, named Ngakkim Yirang. Ngakkim told us in his native language, which Oken translated for me, that he saw my uncle’s plane’s wreckage when he was very young. The plane at that time was very much intact, he said, and there was no evidence of fire or explosion at the time of the crash.

It’s the evening before the first day of the trek to the crash site. I’m writing this now by candlelight. The hut we’re in is quite large. There’s a firepit in the middle of the floor for cooking. Oken’s uncle and aunt served us rice and a delicious omelet for supper. They also served Oken and me some fish but I’m afraid I didn’t have an appetite for fish, so I gave my portion to Oken. Oken has been extremely helpful, offering lots of great advice about what to take on the trek, and what to leave behind. His relatives have been very friendly and helpful.

Some impressions of my first day in Damroh:

(1) How strange it felt being served tea in a cup of fine china while setting on the floor of a thatched hut.
(2) Waking up in the middle of the night to hear a conversation among several Abor tribals, spoken completely in the Abor language, but which I could guess the nature of, because the conversation was sprinkled with references to “Cleen-ton”, “Obama”, “McCain”, and “Biden.” Unfortunately, I suspected this was just a dream, and Oken confirmed for me in the morning that there was no such conversation that night.
(3) Telling Oken that I’m glad that my uncle’s resting place for the past 65 years has been such a beautiful part of the earth.
(4) How the village of Damroh, which has about 500 people, is spread out on the side of a mountain, so huts and other village buildings (like the community center and the school) are located on different levels.
(5) Oken’s uncle’s hut: underneath the main floor is where his livestock are kept – chickens, pigs, and goats.

Saturday, September 27: Day 1 of the Trek to the Crash site

I awoke when it was still dark. In a little while, I started hearing the crowing of roosters all over the village – first one, then another, and finally a crazy chorus of crowings. One of the villagers in our hut started the cooking fire in the firepit in the center of the floor – a large metal pot propped above the flame started boiling its soon-to-be known contents. I showed pictures of my family to Oken’s uncle and aunt. Oken’s uncle knows some English, so he understood when I told him my four children’s ages and names. He seemed very impressed by the pictures.

After a delicious breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, rice, and meat, we set out for the crash site. For the first half hour or so, I was very upbeat and optimistic. But as the trail got steeper and steeper, I grew more and more out of breath. Despite the fact that I used two trekking poles given to me by my friend Hank Cantrell back in North Carolina, the weight of my backpack, combined with the steepness of the climb, soon exhausted me more than I could ever remember being. Oken generously offered to carry my backpack for me, and I readily accepted his offer. Unfortunately, I accidentally broke one of the trekking poles early that day, but I continued on with the remaining one.

One of our party – a reporter for the newspaper Arunachal Front – had developed a bad rash on his arm just before we left Damroh. He continued with us on the trek for about 45 minutes, but he then developed a fever and his arms started to swell up. We all thought it best that he abandon the trek and return to Damroh, in the interest of his own health. I certainly did not want any of the crew to risk his health for this trip.

As we continued upward, we started to encounter tree and ground leeches, which stuck to our shoes, pants, hands, and arms. I had never seen leeches before, but knew before I arrived in India that they would probably be a problem, from what Clayton had told me. The leeches we encountered on the trail were slimy, worm-like creatures, about 1.5 inches long. The ones which attached themselves to our clothing would try to penetrate through to our skin by wiggling their way through the weave. As soon as we saw them on our bodies, we would try to remove them any way we could before they could bite us and start sucking our blood, but removing them was not easy. If you pulled them off with your hands, they would just stick to your hands. Our guides had sprinkled a tobacco concoction on our shoes back in Damroh to keep them away, but it didn’t seem to do much good. Finally, I had some success in removing the leeches by pulling the leeches off with leaves.

As we progressed along the trail that morning, the trail became steeper and rockier, and the whole venture seemed more like rock climbing than trekking. I had to stop more and more often just to catch my breath. Oken and the others, however, were having no trouble at all, which, while not surprising, was still embarrassing. Oken kept encouraging me and that helped my spirit greatly. At one point we agreed that I should take the lead, so I could set my own pace, instead of trying to keep up with the guides’ pace. Fortunately, the weather was dry and not too hot. The trail itself was also fairly dry, except for a very few muddy spots. Nevertheless, the trail was getting so steep, and my energy level was getting so low, that I found myself forced to crawl to get up the steepest slopes on the trail.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we reached the clearing that would serve as our first camp, or as Oken called it, “leech camp”, since it was deep in the most leech-infested part of the trail. We had trekked for about four hours straight, and I was delighted that there would be no more trekking that day, given how painful my legs and lungs were feeling by that point. Setting up camp here made sense because it was relatively flat, and had a stream nearby. Oken’s uncle and cousins, who served as his crew, quickly set up tents, and started two fires for cooking and heating tea. They also built a lean-to over the fires to protect them from any rain we might get, using long pieces of lumber that they had stored at the clearing several days before. Oken’s uncle then left us and returned later with a squirrel that he had shot with his rifle. He then cooked the squirrel meat for his dinner.

At dinner time, Oken told me that the next two days of the trek would be less demanding physically, because the trail would not be as steep as it was today. After dinner, I looked forward to a long restful sleep in my tent, but it wasn’t to be. During the night, while I was sleeping, I was bitten by leeches that had apparently gotten into the tent by way of my clothing. I awoke in the middle of the night to find one of my fingers and my scalp a bloody mess.

Sunday, September 28: Day Two of the Trek

After sunrise the next day, I spoke with Oken again about the crash site. He told me that a Mishmi village – Sagyang – was located fairly close to the crash site, and Mishmi villagers had picked up guns, liquor bottles, socks and an oxygen mask from the crash site some years before. For breakfast that day, I had squirrel meat for the first time in my life – it tasted something like pork, but not as good.

We then continued on our trek. Five of us – Oken, the Niishi videographer Katung, our driver, Oken’s uncle, and myself – set out first. The rest of the crew would join us later after tearing down the tents. The trail we followed took us through fairly dense forest, on relatively flat ground, which was certainly a welcome change from the previous day’s arduous climb. But after about an hour of trekking, the trail suddenly came to a dead end, vanishing in the undergrowth. Oken informed me that we had mistakenly gotten off the correct trail sometime earlier. Oken’s uncle backtracked to find out where we had gone astray. The rest of us stayed where we were, waiting for Oken’s uncle to send word that he had found the correct trail. Unfortunately, staying put while we waited made us a perfect target for ground leeches, which attacked our skin or attached themselves to our clothing, attempting with varying degrees of success to penetrate to our skin.

About a half-hour later, a porter from the “leech camp” arrived to let us know that Oken’s uncle had found the right trail, and he led us back to that juncture. Now that we were back on the right trail, the trail started getting much steeper. I noticed that while today’s trek appeared to be less demanding on my lungs, it seemed much more demanding on my knees and feet, which became more and more painful. As we continued on, the flat ground we encountered early that morning became just a memory, with the trail getting as steep as the first day’s trek. Today’s trek also led us along many narrow and often slippery mountain ledges. All of us needed to grab hold of vines and branches to help us maintain our footing while we made our way along these ledges. Unfortunately, many of the branches just broke off in our hands, and the vines were often quite thorny, so we had to be very careful about which vines and branches to grab.

While making my way along one of these ledges, I totally lost my footing and started tumbling head over heels down a heavily wooded slope. I must have tumbled two or three times before hitting my head on a tree and coming to a stop. Oken came to my assistance immediately. I checked to make sure I was okay, and Oken and the others helped me back on to the trail. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that I hadn’t even injured myself during my fall, not to mention getting killed.

As we continued up the trail, the pain in my knees started getting worse. I could also feel blisters developing on the backs of my heels. My mouth became very dry, despite the frequent sips of water I was taking from my hiking belt bottle. Fortunately, we were starting to leave the most leech-infested part of the trail. To help me push on, I kept thinking of my family’s support for what I was doing, that I was doing this for them, my uncle Irwin, for my country and for the cause of missing World War II American soldiers. There could be no going back, despite the pain that suffused the lower half of my body, and despite the dryness of my mouth and being constantly out of breath.

I tried various methods to keep my spirits up. One was to hum to myself the marching song from the movie “Bridge on the River Kwai”, which had been a favorite of mine when I was a kid. I also tried to find humor in the situation. At one point, when Oken suggested I sit down to rest, I replied: “Should I sit on the sofa or on the recliner?” Oken chuckled, and said “Take the beanbag.”

As the day’s trek wore on, across narrow, muddy ledges, up steep inclines, down steep inclines, over fallen logs and through dense vegetation, we started losing the light. It was at this point that my endurance started evaporating rapidly. I didn’t complain but my pace slowed down even more, slowing down the whole trekking party significantly. Soon we lost the light altogether – so we continued on by flashlight. Oken had not planned to be trekking at night – he expected us to reach the next camp before sundown. But my slow pace forced us to trek into the night. To help keep me going, one of Oken’s cousins pulled me from ahead, while another one pushed me from behind. As we trekked endlessly through the darkness, my state of exhaustion got so bad that it seemed to distort my mental state – I started feeling like I was dreaming a bad dream. My eyes started playing tricks on me – the light from the guides’ flashlights seemed to show buildings on the side of the trail. I couldn’t understand why we didn’t stop at the buildings.

Oken kept telling me that the next campsite was very close by. I asked him how many yards away it was, and he replied “about one hundred meters.” That gave me some hope that the end of the day’s trek was in sight. I started counting off the numbers from 1 to 100, slowly, as we moved forward, grabbing hold of roots and branches along the trail for support. As I got to “100”, we still had not arrived. I decided to count from 1 to 25. It was then that, almost unbelievably, Oken announced that we had arrived. I looked up, saw a camp fire in the distance, at the bottom of a steep, narrow slope, and felt a huge sense of relief. Oken’s uncle and some of his nephews had made their way to the campsite ahead of us, and had already set everything up for the night. Yet I still would not let myself feel that we had made it until we were standing in the campsite itself. I was too weak to walk down the remaining few yards, so I slid down the slope instead.

Having finally reached this next campsite, I sat down on a log near the campfire, too exhausted to even think. Oken’s crew gave me hot tea with brandy, and Oken’s uncle patted me on the back, saying (either in Abor or Hindi, I couldn’t tell which) that he was very proud of me for making it this far, since he could see that I was suffering a good deal.

This new campsite was not the flat open field that “leech camp” had been. Since it was situated on the side of the mountain, it was much more compact due to the lack of available space. In fact, Oken’s crew needed to set up our tents at different levels on the mountainside. After eating some Ramen noodles and drinking some tea, I made my way, with some assistance from the crew, to my tent, and was soon asleep.

Monday, September 29: Day 3 of the Trek.

Today was supposed to be the final push to the crash site, but heavy rain during the previous night, which continued into the morning, put this plan into severe doubt. The weariness and soreness of my legs clinched the decision – Oken and I agreed that we would stay put that day to rest up, and push on to the crash site tomorrow. This respite would hopefully give my legs and my overall mental outlook the necessary time to recover. So, at an altitude of about 7000 feet, we rested for the day.

Tuesday, September 30: Day 4 of the Trek

Our plans have changed again. Instead of staying a day or two at the crash site, which Oken had envisioned in his original itinerary, Oken’s plan is now to set out this morning, spend only an hour or two at the crash site, and then return to this campsite. But before starting out, Oken suggested that I may just want to start back on the return trip now, and not go on to the crash site, in view of my fatigue. I didn’t give Oken’s suggestion even a moment of consideration – there was no way I that I would go back without reaching my goal. I hadn’t suffered through leech bites, blister-covered feet, and hours of exhausting walking and climbing to go back now.

So we began our final ascent to the crash site of the “Hot as Hell.” My legs were still quite wobbly at this point, but I was hoping they would soon adjust. We proceeded up the mountain, through very dense underbrush, and soon arrived at a cold stream. After filling our water jugs from the stream, we crossed it and continued on, confronting some of the most difficult rock climbing yet seen on the trek. Of course, the rock climbing was only difficult for me. The team members – all in their twenties except for 35-year-old Oken, and his 58-year-old uncle – took to the trail like mountain goats, almost never missing a handhold or foothold. Most of the time, they didn’t even need handholds; they would ascend steep rocky slopes without touching the ground with their hands. Narrow mountain ledges needing to be traversed continued to be an ever-present obstacle, as they had been on the previous trekking day. In most cases, even if you fell off a ledge, there were trees down below that would keep you from falling too far. But in a few cases, there were no trees below to keep you from falling a long distance – just a bare, rocky slope.

Oken’s team had marked the trail by cutting slash marks with their machetes on trees every hundred yards or so. After hours of trekking and climbing, Oken announced that the really steep part of the climb to the crash site was over – the rest of the way would be relatively flat, so we had to be close to the altitude of the crash site itself: 9400 feet. He smiled and gave a “V for Victory” sign. We resumed the trek, passing stands of dead bamboo trees. The trail on the ground almost disappeared in the thick, knee-high vegetation, forcing us to depend almost totally on the slash marks to guide us. Then, toward noontime, one of the team members ahead of me on the trail pointed to his left and announced, in English, “Hot as Hell”. I turned to my left, looked down the slope below me, and saw several large pieces of metallic debris. It’s hard to describe the feelings that came over me. Certainly I felt an overwhelming sense of relief that I had finally reached the “Hot as Hell” crash site, after so much planning, after traveling halfway round the world, and after suffering so much pain and mental stress from all the trekking in the last few days. But there was also a different feeling, a sense of awe from casting my eyes on the object of my family’s and the other families’ obsession over the past year.

I examined the debris more closely: there were several flat pieces of metal lying on the ground. One of the pieces distinctly had the lettering “B-24J” on it. A few yards away from this collection of debris lay one of the aircraft’s four engines. It looked to be in very good condition, actually, considering its age, but its propeller was nowhere within sight.

After some minutes of examining the engine and taking pictures, we proceeded down a steep rocky incline, devoid of vegetation. At the bottom of the incline, Oken showed me the largest piece of wreckage visible at the crash site – one of the B-24’s wings, in fairly good shape, propped up on its side as the result of the impact.

After looking over the wing, I decided that this was the appropriate time for the memorial service that I had long planned for to perform at the crash site. I started by stating “We are here to honor the memory of the eight brave crewmen of the ‘Hot as Hell’, who sacrificed their lives in defense of their country when their plane crashed here, in Arunachal Pradesh, on January 25, 1944.” I then read their names in alphabetical order: “Sheldon Chambers, Alfred H.Gerrans, Jr., Charles D. Ginn, James A. Hinson, Robert E. Oxford, Harry B. Queen, William A. Swanson, and Irwin Zaetz.” Then, for the six Christian crewmen, I read Christian prayers for the dead, and for the two Jewish crewmen, read the Jewish Mourners’ Kaddish prayer. Katung, our team’s videographer, taped the entire ceremony. Oken concluded the ceremony by delivering a very eloquent speech in which he pointed out that, having accomplished my mission, I could now feel that a great weight had been lifted from my heart.

The journey back to what Oken had named “Camp Gary” (the second camp on the trail) was indeed arduous, what with the slippery, narrow ledges we traversed, and the steep slopes we climbed down in our descent. By the time the light started to fade, my slow pace resulted in our having still at least a couple of kilometers to go. With night falling, we were facing a second “night trek.” Flashlights came on again, and with my leg strength rapidly dissipating, Oken’s crew took special pains to make sure I made it back okay. They never had to carry me, but they did plenty of pushing and pulling to keep me going.

We finally reached Camp Gary, my body in a state of total exhaustion. As I and two or three other team members accompanying me broke into the clearing, those already in the camp burst into applause. I was almost too sapped of energy to be gratified by the applause, but I was anyway. I sat down on the log near the campfire and was immediately given a cup of tea. I thanked everyone around me for all the wonderful assistance they had given me, assistance that had probably saved my life at least half a dozen times. I then drank the tea, and, with their help, made my way back to my tent.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008: Day 5 of the Trek

Ironically, having made it to the crash site yesterday, today turned out to be the day when my spirits were the lowest of the entire trek. I hardly had the energy to stand up, and I began thinking that I probably couldn’t make the return trip down the mountain on my own feet, knowing first-hand all the difficult terrain that lay below us. The thinner air at the altitude of Camp Gary – 7000 feet – may have contributed to my depressed state of mind. Early that morning, I asked Oken to promise me that if anything happened to me, he would make sure my family got the diary I had been keeping. Oken smiled nervously when he heard me say that, and he responded by saying “You’re scaring me, Gary!” He assured me that I would be fine, and he then decided to head down the mountain that day to consult with the Damro village medic, leaving me and a few other crew members, including Anong Tayeng, his second-in-command, at the camp, so I could get another day of rest. I stayed in my tent the whole day, trying to regain my strength..

Thursday, October 2, 2008: Day 6 of the Trek

I woke up hoping to spend another day in the camp – my body still seemed way too weak to deal with the treacherous descent down the mountain. But Anong told me that we all would be going back down today. It was clear from the tone of his voice that this was a hard-and-fast decision. Fortunately, we would only be going halfway to the “Leech camp”, setting up camp at an intermediate location to allow me to rest sooner. When he told me this, I was concerned about how I would deal with the climb down, but I was grateful that we would be trekking for only four hours, not the twelve hours it took us to get from “Leech camp” to “Camp Gary” on the trek’s second day. On top of that, I felt I was going stir-crazy from spending so many hours lying in my tent here at this cramped camp site, and I was therefore glad to be leaving that.

Having left “Camp Gary” behind, it seemed like every few minutes, I would be so out of breath that I would have to halt the downward trek temporarily, and collapse to the ground to recover some energy, before continuing on after 10 minutes or so. The pain in my knees, and on the skin of my feet, was getting worse. I thought to myself, When would we finally reach the intermediate camp, for God’s sake? When I finally caught sight of an already set-up tent, I said aloud “What a blessed sight!” Oken had sent the Damroh health assistant up to this camp to check out my condition. The assistant took my blood pressure and checked my lungs with his stethoscope, determining that I was okay. If I hadn’t been okay, he was prepared to administer to me an intravenous drip. But my feet and legs definitely needed attention, so he gave me an injection of pain killer and bandaged the bloody sores on my feet. Long before nightfall, I fell asleep.

Friday, October 3, 2008: Day 7 of the Trek

At the beginning of the day, Anong told me that our goal for the day would be the Leech camp, and I was certainly happy to hear that. I thought that attempting to go any farther than that would be too difficult for my legs. As we set out, I found that my legs felt much better than they had yesterday. Apparently, the pain killer and the bandages on my feet were helping. Before very long, we arrived at the Leech camp. In fact, I was surprised at how fast we had gotten there. We rested there a while and then Anong announced that we would be continuing on to Damroh in just a few minutes! I had my doubts about this decision, but Anong was adamant. So we embarked on the last leg of the entire trek.

During most of this part of the trek, we needed to make our way down a large number of relatively steep slopes. To help maintain my balance, an Abor tribal named Ania held a robe and proceeded ahead of me. I held the middle of the rope, and Anong held the tail end of the rope, in back of me. As the painkiller started to wear off, the pain in my legs started to increase, forcing me to cut back my pace to what it had been before I received the medication.

After a few hours of trekking, with the sun still high in the sky, we began to arrive in the vicinity of Damroh. A pipe that brought mountain water to the village started paralleling the trail. Soon, we were going through the village’s farmland, where corn and other crops were raised. When we entered the grounds of the village itself, I experienced a huge sense of relief, now that the end of my journey on foot was nearly over. Schoolchildren dressed in their blue and white uniforms caught sight of me, and started following us as we made our way to Oken’s uncle’s hut. As a feeble attempt at humor, I told Anong that the children, seeing me holding onto the rope held on either end by Anong and Ania, may have thought that I was being held prisoner ! Anong chuckled.

We finally arrived at Oken’s uncle’s hut, with Katung videotaping my arrival from the hut’s long wooden porch. I sat down heavily onto the porch and, in total exhaustion and relief, collapsed onto my back. Getting back to Damroh felt like getting back home to me.