Nainital Ridge — Injured Trekker & School Bus — SSB GPE Practice
The map
Same idea as the printed sketch on the GTO table. Gold = pucca, dashed = kaccha, blue = water, pine clumps = village. Read kilometres before you divide the group.
- C — Camp Oak
- K — Khud trail
- B — Bhowali
- H — Civil Hospital
- S — Mall bus stand
- R — Nala bridge
The GTO’s narration
You are a group of persons as many as you are, coming from Camp Oak after a morning trek on the Nainital ridge. You have one jeep (40 km/h on pucca, 20 km/h on kaccha), one motorcycle, a first-aid box at the camp and a mobile that gets signal only at Camp Oak and on the Civil Hospital roof. As you reached the camp, a local guide came from the Khud trail and said a trekker there has a suspected broken ankle and is going into shock. At the same time a woman from Bhowali said her 7-year-old child wandered toward the nala after lunch and has been missing for twenty minutes. Loose shale has also blocked the khud footpath above the camp and a second trekker is cut off on the far side. Your group must be at Mall Road bus stand by 16:10 hrs to catch the only Haldwani bus that connects your booked railway berth. The nala bridge takes one jeep at a time. Do not invent a helicopter or an extra vehicle. Telephone beyond the camp and hospital roof is not reliable. Now the time is 14:40 hrs. As brave young men/lady what will you do.
10 minutes — write your plan on paper
Start the clock, look at the map, write priorities, who goes where, and clock times. Nothing is typed on this page.
Idle
A complete GPE solution (for comparison)
This is one workable plan, not the only plan. The GTO wants a split group, life before duty, and no invented resources. Compare after you write.
Priority of problems
- 1. Life — injured trekker in shock at Khud trail (K).
- 2. Life — missing child last seen from Bhowali toward the nala (B).
- 3. Duty — cut-off trekker on the blocked khud path (K).
- 4. Duty — last Haldwani bus from Mall stand at 16:10 (S).
Distance and time (from the map)
- Camp Oak → Khud trail: 2 km kaccha ≈ 6 min motorcycle, 6 min jeep.
- Camp → nala bridge: 3 km kaccha ≈ 9 min jeep.
- Bridge → Bhowali: 2 km kaccha ≈ 6 min.
- Bhowali → Civil Hospital: 4 km pucca ≈ 6 min.
- Bridge → Mall stand: 5 km pucca ≈ 8 min jeep / walk ~50 min.
What the group actually does
- Nominate one candidate as coordinator at Camp Oak with the mobile. Do not send all eight to one problem.
- Party A (2 + first-aid + motorcycle) leave at 14:42 for Khud (arrive ~14:48). Stabilise the ankle, treat for shock, do not climb the loose shale.
- Party B (2) start on foot/jeep-drop toward Bhowali–nala for the child. Inform the village head. Jeep drops them at the bridge (14:51) and does not wait.
- Party C (1) stays at the slide with the cut-off trekker, marks the path, shouts contact — no hero climb.
- Jeep then goes Camp → bridge → Bhowali → Hospital with the injured (reach hospital ~15:10). Call the hospital from camp before the jeep leaves so a trolley is ready.
- Party D (2) plus recovered members RV at Mall stand by 16:00. If the jeep is late, motorcycle ferries two to the stand; the rest walk the 5 km pucca from the bridge.
- Child, if found, goes with the jeep on the hospital run or is left with Bhowali adults — do not delay shock treatment.
Close: Life first, then the bus. The group is split, every resource on the map is used once, and nobody invents a second jeep. Conference point: Mall stand 16:00.