If the travel literature is to be believed, then the combination India/Nepal/Bhutan contains a number of very serious threats to one's health. Not only does one have to get a health insurance with provisos for airlift out, but one needs to carry a full medicine chest, and have various kinds of inoculations. I am not very keen on needles, but last year - since I went to Africa - had updated my tetanus shots along with Hepetitis A and B. Now I wondered what more I could need? My friend Karen mentioned a travel clinic, CIVES - Centro de Informação em Saúde para Viajantes, at the federal university (UFRJ). Using their web-site I asked for an appointment and was promptly attended. A week later I stood in their office with two young doctors, who had prepared for my visit with printed medical charts of the three countries I would visit. They interviewed me carefully, discussed my itinerary in detail and settled on suggestions for typhoid fever vaccination and a polio booster shot, along with medicine for height sickness, re-hydration powders, in case of Traveler's Diarrea, and powerful insect spray. A wish to prescribe rabies shots hung in the air, but I shrugged it off. I will stay clear of all dogs and even cows (yaks?) who transmit rabies in their slime. My theory is that I will be so covered in clothes in the cold Bhutan climate that it will be hard to find an entry point! In typical friendly Brazilian fashion the CIVES doctors located the otherwise unavailable polio vaccine at Fiocruz and got me in today - all of this free of charge and very competently done. Fiocruz was another surprise, a spacy leafy oasis off crazy Av. Brasil, where another public travel clinic - Centro de Viajantes no Hospital Dia do IPEC - offers a similar service and administers vaccines, including Yellow Fever.
Meanwhile the stack of stuff to take grows on a table in my guest room - the sub zero sleeping bag, the liner, the socks, the winter clothes, the boots, the energy bars, the meds, the water purifying tablets, etc. etc. - soon to be joined by the trek poles (for my ailing knees) and the insulating sleeping pad, also suggested by the doctors. My friend Amanda will bring them down from Florida this weekend. WHAT WOULD I BE WITHOUT MY FRIENDS?
In a week I will be sitting on an Air France flight headed for Paris, then New Delhi, where 22 hours later, Raj, the driver, will be waiting to take me to the beautiful Imperial Hotel.
Who's a lucky girl?
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