 Dr. Haresh Gopwani is one of the most sought-after and respected ear, nose, and throat doctors on the island.
Dr. Haresh Gopwani is one of the most sought after and respected ear, nose, and throat doctors on the island. Having obtained his primary medical degrees from Jamaica's Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies, and his post-graduate surgical degrees in Britain, he and his wife Vishni operate their office out of the growing commercial centre of Belleville, St. Michael, on the western outskirts of Bridgetown. "I've known since I was 12 years old that I wanted to study medicine," he says, but there is another passion that drives him - mountain climbing - and he's been doing it for most of his life.
Dr. Gopwani is a first generation Barbadian-Indian, his mother and father having emigrated here from India in 1949. "My parents came to Barbados to escape the Indian Civil war of 1947," says Dr. Gopwani. "It was very difficult for us growing up. We were very poor - my family landed penniless - and I remember my father trying his hand at many professions, among them barbering, salesmanship, and then construction."
Dr. Gopwani admits to not spending much time outside of his books as a teenager. "I was your typical bookworm," he says, "for I knew that if I wanted to study medicine it would be a big commitment on my father's part and that I would have to do very well." And so games and athletics were absent from his youth.
Jamaica would change all of that. It was there he took up the challenge to climb the challenging Blue Mountain range. "It was so invigorating!" he exclaims. "This was my first sporting adventure and I could not believe how much I had missed."
That first expedition to the "strange misty land" of the mountaintops was as part of a 40-member group of Caribbean students. Since then he's scaled the Blue Mountains three times over, and has conquered some of the world's most famous peaks.
Here in the Caribbean he's climbed the mountains of Dominica, the smoking Soufrière volcano of St. Vincent, and the trans-island ranges that create the spine of the Guadeloupe topography. In 2000, Dr. Gopwani led Bajan expeditions to the top of the Inca Trail in Peru - some 14,400 feet above sea level - and in December of that year he and his team reached the Mount Everest Base Camp, an impressive 18,900 high - a trek that took them 10 days.
But his greatest mountaineering accomplishment by far came in 2003 when he led a Barbados team to the summit of Kilimanjaro, the highest peak on the African continent - 19,400 feet above the ground.
"That was an absolute thrill. We passed through at least 6 types of vegetation - from rainforests, to savannah lands, to cloud forests, and then barren stretches of glaciers," he recalls. And what was it like on the mountaintop? "It was like being in a big freezer", he says, "it was white everywhere, -4°C, and nothing but snow and ice."
Indeed, Dr. Gopwani has taken on the challenge of both athletic and career mountaintops - and he has undoubtedly mastered them both.
Article written in 2004 and compliments of "Ins and Outs of Barbados" Magazine
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