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.

John was drunk the first time I met him – 68 years old, thin but tough, short but imposing.

It would begin as an emptiness that churned and expanded in Hajurama’s stomach, gutting her, carving her from within.