From India: A Mountainous Road Well Traveled - providing mobile health care

This is my first respite from travel in about a week, so I finally have some time to jot down some of my experiences for the past several days.

For the past week I have been traveling around the Himalayan mountain range interacting with people of all walks of life who live in these parts and seek service from the mobile health care units that Rajbhra operates.

The first thing that amazed me was the absolute beauty of the whole place, and the second thing that amazed me was how quickly I would come to trade all my surroundings for a nice warm bed.

You see, for the first couple of days everything was exciting, everything piqued my curiosity and I wanted to see all that this land had to offer. However, by day number five, after traveling over a hundred kilometers each day through mountainous terrain, I yearn for perhaps a slightly more stable environment.

Nonetheless, I have two days of a brief respite from travel, which I will use fully to fondly reminisce of days at UC Davis where my greatest stress was a midterm the next day. 

Anyways, back to the travels.

Due to the nature of MHV (mobile health van) operating in relatively rural but incredibly hilly environments, I expected to see a certain kind of patient at every single one of their medical camps. That of a populace who has never had access to health care.

However, as one of my primary duties was data collection, I came to learn of the wide varieties of all the people that both use these medical services and also live in this region of the world. This caught me by complete surprise, as I was introduced to a large variety of people living in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, seeking a basic human service.

I go back into the field tomorrow, so I will have more exposure and more data to collect. I am looking forward to the environments and people, but not so much the travel. 

Monith Ilavarasan, UC Davis undergraduate, Managerial Economics