A short trip in Rinchenpong - a small village in West Sikim

After our weekend trip in Mandarmoni in last August, our mind and soul have been getting tiered in the midst of din and bustle of Kolkata, feeling clumsy mentally to see the meaningless political or social hegemony. Mind revolts : do we only live for some office chores and not deserved to be in some better place where we can rejuvenate our mind and come back refreshed. So we decided to escape from this city and go back to the nature ;-)

Planned for a trip within a short notice is always difficult and more difficult from Kolkata as while mentioning for a short trip, we usually confine ourselves within some very known places. The biggest problem of those places is that for huge tourist gathering those places are also becoming very much congested.

So we found a relatively lesser known place - named Rinchenpong in West Sikim. Though it has been told to us that none other than Rabindra Nath Tegore had spent couple of days here in 1920s but serene virginity of this place still remain intact. We started from Kaunamoyee, Salt Lake by Volvo bus operated by Royal Cruiser. To cut the big story small, I must say the service of the operator is good but the roads here are bad condition so instead of 12 hours it took 15 hours to reach to Siliguri. So my 2 cents: until and unless you make the plan in no time, you should avoid the bus route!

After reaching to the Siliguri, we took food from a local restaurant and started for our destination. We got shared jeep service from SNT bus stand as we are two but unfortunately the jeep driver put as many person as he wished inside the jeep. Eventually we need to wait over an hour in the bus stand and hence while coming down from Rinchenpong we reserved a private Sumo. I think the only pros of this shared jeep service is that they are pocket friendly. The ticket price was 300 per head. If you look you  thru the window, you can get view like this.
It's the view of Rangit River .

After five and half hour of tiring yet adventurous journey we reached to Rinchenpong. The first thing that will attract you is that it's calmness; such a calmness, it was hard for me to remember the last time I heard the chorus of cricket and other insects in such a distinct way.

Next day we woke up earlier than usual and from the balcony of our hotel, Mount Kanchenjunga and ranges greeted us. This is the first time I saw this world famous peak and I've dearth of language to express the beauty. There is one under construction place named as Rabindra Smriti Van that is named after memory of famous KOBIGURU (adjacent picture showing the entry of that place).

In Rinchenpong there are two more monasteries one is Rinchenpong Monastery (actual name is  
) that contains a rare idol of Buddha in which He embraced a woman. I remember from my childhood memory, that it is probably the symbol of Bojrojan (?) where Buddhism is mixed with the Tibetan Tantra of idology. Though I don't like this form of Buddhism but anyways different people has got their own  view. Every year probably on May here a big carnival held in which lots of local villagers also participate.

After this we trekked to Resum Monastery  and we were overwhelmed by the beauty of this wild route. We must admit if a local lama was not guiding us we were not able to find the road so quickly! The little boy (who was our guide) have a very sad life. His mother left him when his dad passed away.One of his relatives put him in this monastery where he is staying. They usually give the young lamas food twice in a day but still he might be living with dignity. After the short yet tough trekking (I'm considering people like us who are usually walking on the plain roads) for half an hour, we reached to the Resum Monastery that is deserted now. But the route is a treat..have a look here. Its such as nice experience to walk on this route.

  Where the trees give you the shades and your shoes sink into the fallen leaves... and you can sing with the music given by the unknown birds! When we reached to the deserted monastery, the first feeling was like that Ah.. at last :-).

Diary of a hepatitis A patient - part -II

So I was happy and probably little bit lenient to follow the strict food habit.
Though my first doctor never gave me any concrete diet , always saying I should follow normal diet -- but that's confusing for a lay man like us. Whether I can go for a Maggy (even without the Maggy-masala) in breakfast or TAWA rooti that's tough to decide or I need to take little rice as breakfast. Do I need to take pulse all the time or an alternative way. What about fish in normal diet? What will be the quantity? Chicken, egg..question galore. I personally feel in this kind of liver disease the doctor should have a model diet chart which he/ she can circulate among the patients after the required customization. Otherwise it's really confusing.

I personally felt later point of time that doctor assumed that in jaundice (hepatitis A) one lost appetite. So he prescribed CINTODAC to me which enhance your appetite. Consequently I always felt hungry.

Anyways lets not put perception first that came to my mind later. Lets describe it the way it happened. I went for another LFT where I found my SGPT bounced back to 612 and SGOT also sore higher than the earlier. We became worried and suspect the results of the test. Hence restriction returned, rest increased. Though my doctor assured me.
Now after 1 week this kind of routine I went for my next LFT. My SGPT persisted it;'s high value rather increased from 612 to 654 and same for SGOT. Though  in bothe the cases my Bilirubin remained same 1.0.
Now I felt scared and panicked. Doctor told to me that whether I'm a smoker or take regular alcohol or not. My answer was no. Even for tests like ANA (that determines whether you have had some past history or not for persistent high values of these two liver enzymes) , the result was normal. USG also didn't tell anything irregular; so the scenario is that Liver Function Test told to me that my condition became worse but neither any other test find out the reason or correlation. Even doctor was confused.
My only googling activity was to search about the SGPT/ SGOT and how to reduce it's value. At that time probably my mental illness was more acute than my physical.
But we decided to go for a second opinion. What happened after that -- I'll describe in the last part.

Diary of a hepatitis A patient - part 1

Sorry for such a long delay as I was suffering from in illness that prompted me to not to do anything other than my very necessary activities.
Being a non-medical person, I like to write this thing for people like me who may suffer in hepatitis A and trying to get some case study kind of thing about this disease. First I like to assure according to all the doctors with whom I queered about this disease they informed me it's the least serious among the hepatitis family but most prolonged. Sometimes it might go over 3 months even in medical journal it has been mentioned that some patients were suffered from this disease went well over 6/8 months.
Lets first thing first:
The cause of Hepatitis A  is contaminated water. I went to Puri to visit Lord Jagannath temple and almost all the gastroenterologist in Kolkata told me that  they find a number of patients who came from puri being infected by this disease. So please take mineral water from renowned shops when you'll go to the sea cost mostly eastern sea costs of India.
Symptom : During my travel period I often felt drowsiness and nausea and color of my urine was dark brown.
Still I traveled and took sea bath as at that time I thought it was a normal problem and I took less water. So after coming back in Kolkata on 27th February I went for a Liver Function test (LFT) and find SGPT level has crossed 1000 marks where the normal is <39 and SGOT was also quite high.
Then I went to a gastroenterologist in peerless hospital, Kolkata who prescribed me the following medicines:
Urdiogem 300 (for restoring liver enzymes)
Cintodac (increase appetite)
Heptral (regenerate the liver damage -- as he told that it worked well in Europe)
and Duphalac
I also asked for a test confirmation for hepatitis A, B and E and hepatitis A was reactive whereas the rest are non-reactive. He also asked me for an USG for upper abdomen that proved minimal enlargement of spleen.
Though I knew later at that stage this was redundant but probably it's the habit of the medical practitioners.
Another redundant test was Widal test that confirms whether patient was suffered  from Typhoid or not.
So my request to you that please ask your doctor about the tests when he/she prescribed ; cause there is no point for going unnecessary tests!
However after 2 weeks my SGPT levels came down to 220 and SGOT also lowered down and bilirubin  came to 1.0 from 2.7.
So I was happy and after this what happened that can be called a twist in the story and that put me in a worse mental phase.
I'll elaborate this to my next part as I feel it's my duty for the fellow sufferer to provide a detail of my case so that they can relate their case with mine.
Last but not the least:
Even your immunity level is quite high still it takes 1.5 to 2 months to recover and in this time you can feel mild pain in your liver , loss of appetite which are quite normal according to the doctors.
You can also google and gather the same information.