A GP s latest trip to India will see him treat villagers in makeshift surgery camps in the desert state of Rajasthan. Dr Peter Gough of Royston s Market Hill Surgery, leaves for the two-week trip on Saturday. He will be joined by his son, Captain Will Go

A GP's latest trip to India will see him treat villagers in makeshift surgery camps in the desert state of Rajasthan.

Dr Peter Gough of Royston's Market Hill Surgery, leaves for the two-week trip on Saturday.

He will be joined by his son, Captain Will Gough, and his fellow Army dentist, Captain Seb Burn, along with another of Dr Gough's sons James, a final year medical student at Cardiff University.

During the medical mission the team will visit 25 villages around Khandel and it is hoped a dental clinic will attract ­villagers.

Dr Gough, who is founder and chairman of charity Khandel-light which was set up in 2000, said: "They have no dentists available in the villages - they have to go to the towns, and that is expensive.

"Will has managed to obtain a dentist's portable drill, which will work with a generator."

During the trip Dr Gough will run a medical clinic to treat villagers and assess the medical needs of the area, while Captain Gough and Captain Burn will be offering dentistry to patients.

James Gough will be checking on the incidence of scoliosis - curvature of the spine - among children in the villages, as part of a final year clinical project.

This will be Dr Gough's sixth visit to Khandel, and he said the whole project had been self-funded.

He said: "We could have visiting GPs rotating from the United Kingdom, backed up by qualified doctors learning to become GPs.

"I think there would be doctors in the UK who would be ­interested in going to Khandel."

Dr Gough's patients have ­provided a video camera to record the trip, along with ­blankets, and toys for the villagers' children.

The team will fly form London to Mumbai and then to Jaipur.

A train will then take them to Phulera followed by a Jeep to their base in Khandel.

# Money raised in North Herts has enabled Khandel-light to finance the building of houses and water tanks and to tackle health, unemployment, and education problems.