On the first day of 2019 I happened to be rifling through a bookshelf in a hotel in Benaulim, Goa, a bookshelf of the sort common in places where people come to forget.

“Have you seen a nāgā?” I was talking to an eminent scholar, from a famous American university, about Kathmandu’s religion. He clearly felt that I’d misunderstood what these spirits might be. “They are not snakes,”...

I’ve been back barely a fortnight and my system is rejecting the very air I breathe. My throat feels raw, my eyes water and itch, and I’ve been sneezing like the Dickens.

Let’s spit out the cliché: you are what you eat. What, then, are we? A garden of flowers nodding in the wind? A nation of voracious mlechhas?

The last sip of chai means morning is done. You have plans to abandon.

Perhaps our salvation and power lie in standing together and sharing our stories, loudly and clearly.

Where’s the pleasure in tea without a bit of a burp?

Up and over a suspension bridge, past a tarp slipping off a bamboo frame littered with the aftermath of a bāluwā-gitti party – Himalayan Dragon Beer empties, half-devoured meals, a sodden fire, bike helmet, damp blankets.

Of a sudden I find myself transported to a cottage of my own, an hour from Pokhara, a dusty, longish bus from Kathmandu.