Few of us could speak the other’s language, but all of us had by now discovered the lodge’s unique ‘outside toilet’…which transcended all national barriers. The lodge owner wouldn’t let you use it unless you...

He was lonely. I could see that. He was working his butt off-and mine, too-in the hope that a million rupees might sort out his sex life. I prayed to Buddha he would be successful....

Damoder climbed slowly to his feet. ‘Buy lot!’ he wheedled, ‘I am poor man. I sell you cheap. I am bank-Rupert! Apparently the only things that could save him from bank-rupertcy were our dollars.

My meal arrived. It was a bowl of tepid, green curried water with two spinach leaves floating in it. The waiter called it ‘vegetable soup’. I called it inedible slop.

After a lifetime of soft, easy living in the West, one’s buttocks take an awful hammering out here. Backpacking around India is just one long round of sitting on bone-hard, chafing, bruising and generally uncomfortable...