It was our greatest pleasure to have Robin Pollock (Joan’s son) with us for this our latest trip to the valley. Robin is a consultant surgeon working in London but was delighted to revisit The Lady Willingdon Hospital in Manali, where he did his elective training 30 years ago, before travelling to the Spiti Valley. He spent time with Dr Laji who provided him with his initial surgical training to become a qualified doctor. It was an absolute pleasure to see Laji and his wife Sheila and to reminisce about old times! We also had the pleasure of seeing Dr Philip Alexander who has been running the hospital for the last 21 years. It was impressive to see how Dr Philip has upgraded the hospital with new equipment and technology to a very high standard. 

Our journey to Spiti was much smoother due to the building of a tunnel under the Rotang Pass and improved roads. We stayed at our Community Centre (CC) in Kaza during our time in the valley. Robin was very keen to see Mani village school. We were met by a young man and woman at the entrance and to our absolute delight they told us that they had been students at the school when it opened in 2005. They both have trained as teachers and are delighted to be back at the school as part of the teaching staff. The school is now a thriving hub of education for the local children and is managed by the government. 

We also made a visit to Rungrik school, where we are sponsoring the education of a number of students. We had an excellent meeting with the Principal who is very happy with our support. We met a couple of our sponsored children who were both enthusiastic and doing well. 

Post Covid the Spiti Valley has become a popular tourist destination for trekking, visiting the Buddhist Monasteries and Snow Leopard safaris. The local people are benefitting from this new trend and it is bringing money into the economy and providing the young people with good employment opportunities. 

Our CC is now ten years old and because of climate change it is subject to bad weather and we are now looking towards repairing the entire roof to keep it water tight. Spiti Projects Society, our local charity held a meeting at which Robin was present and he came up with some very forward thinking suggestions for the future of the building. We think it is essential to install Wifi so the local people and tourists who stay there can benefit from this. Robin’s suggestion is that a number of computers are set up in the CC and local people offered free tuition to enhance their IT knowledge. This will provide them with valuable skills giving them a wider vision of the world and future technology. 

As many of our supporters know, we have organised a number of successful eye camps in the CC over the last couple of years. Moving forward, our plan is to train 2 local people as technicians to provide the community with eye tests and ‘off the shelf’ specs. 

Thank you for being part of our journey – we couldn’t do it without you.

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