'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.'"
Yesterday I learnt that my friend Sara, who's been doing fieldwork up in the Himalayas (see this post from when I visited her last year), had an accident. From what I've heard, it's not too major, but it does require her to fly back to Kathmandu to get the problem fixed. Also, most people are actually terrified of flying in and out of Lukla airport (Youtube is filled with videos like this one) and there also seems to be at least one accident every year involving these small aircraft. I hope she's alright and that her trip to the hospital in Kathmandu won't actually make things worse...
Her accident reminded me of the inherent risk involved when you spend a long time in a place that's miles away from any proper hospital / healthcare facility. It also reminded me of the 'risk management' forms I'd recently filled in in order to get authorisation to embark on this upcoming trip. (Note: I don't officially have approval yet, but I've already got my tickets and I'll be in Singapore for just under 2 weeks.)
This was the first time I'd actually had to fill in such forms and it brought home the fact that the whole of North-east India is classified as 'Category 4 - Reconsider your need to travel' by DFAT and hence, a 'high risk' area. One of the forms had three sections to fill in:
- 'Potential risk' - what could go wrong during the travel
- 'Contributing factors / detailed risk contributions' - what could contribute to something going wrong
- 'Detailed controls' - what do you have in place to manage / reduce the identified risk
There were 4 broad categories of risk:
- Health
- Personal safety
- Civil unrest
- Terrorism
All 4 are applicable to the North-east.
Now, I usually don't consider health a major issue, since I carry my own medication and prefer to self-medicate or just rest when it's something like the flu. Mosquito-borne diseases also aren't a problem in the hills and especially during the dry season. However, I have had food poisoning twice in Nagaland, and the last time I had to endure being on a bus for 10 hours while suppressing the need to throw up, but I had people looking after me the next day. I also feel like I'd be able to get to a hospital within a day from wherever I am, though I am concerned about the state of most hospitals in India.
In terms of personal safety, I'm usually with other people when I'm in the North-east. I avoid travelling at night between cities (except for that trip on the bus with a whole group of farmers) and in towns I don't usually venture out at night all by myself. I also try to avoid riding in helicopters which have notoriously bad safety records in the region.
Civil unrest hasn't been such a problem during my last two trips to Nagaland. In fact, I've had more trouble in Assam, specifically the district of Karbi Anglong, which is frequently struck by bandhs, where local groups call for businesses to close and all local transport generally comes to a halt, unless you're on 'hospital' duty. I've only wandered out on bandh days if my friends who are familiar with the situation say it's alright to go out.
And of course, there's terrorism: North-east India is home to a myriad of organisations who are agitating for some sort of independence, be it from the state of Assam or the country of India itself. In particular, Republic Day on 26 January (same as Australia Day) is not a good time to be travelling. Earlier this year, most of the trains in the region were cancelled during the week surrounding Republic Day. A bus travelling from Guwahati to Manipur was also stopped somewhere in Karbi Anglong in the middle of the night and some passengers were shot. I was in the main city of Guwahati at the time, and I pretty much avoided hanging around the train station and marketplaces, which have been targets of bomb blasts in the past.
At the end of the day, it's not as if I'm completely alone when I travel in the North-east. I have plenty of local friends / guides and take plenty of local advice. There's always risk, but it can be minimised and managed, and I usually have an exit strategy. I generally try not to dwell on the dangers, but it's good to acknowledge them when you fill in such forms and to explicitly state how you would deal with the dangers should push come to shove. The RCLT (Research Centre for Linguistic Typology) at La Trobe Uni has a great fieldwork manual that also includes risk management (available online at the RNLD website here).
On the other hand sometimes I can't help but think: what happens if I come down with some unknown disease and need to go to a hospital but there's a strike happening and I'm forced to travel by helicopter and the helicopter crashes in the middle of the jungle and I somehow survive but run into rebel groups who then take me prisoner...
