The afternoon was waning as Sumit stood outside the house, trying to take in his surroundings through the mist. The Landrover had climbed some three thousand feet.

Maneybhanjang was at an altitude of about six thousand five hundred and he was to learn, later, that Meghma lay nine thousand five hundred feet above sea level. It took a minute for the warmth of the engine and close-packed human bodies to wear off and the cold to seep in through his clothes. He felt a slight shiver. The house had its windows closed, light showing from one that was visible from the road. There was complete silence all around. Sumit started when a bird, a raven perhaps, let out a shrill cry somewhere in the mist to his left, quite close by. The call was repeated just once and then the bird fell silent, deepening the silence of the mountains.

Meghma. The word rang in his head, as if a bus had stopped in the failing light of dusk in the middle of a featureless plain miles from any human habitation and the conductor was calling out the name of the place, remembering that somebody at the back had wanted to get off there... What did the word mean? Did it mean anything at all?

He seemed to remember that the man at the grocery had said something like "Place of Clouds" or "Place in the Clouds" - or was he just imagining things? Since "megh" meant "cloud," it would be very romantic if the name did mean something like that.

In any case, is this really where he was meant to be? Where he wanted to be? What did he really want from the mountains? What had he wanted all these years? What did he want from the fog, the sky that was present, though not visible, the bird that had called twice, as if to scare him - or was it to warn him of something, or simply to mark his unwanted arrival and presence, an event that was probably of no importance in the larger scheme of things? What did he - would he - want in the house that stood silently in front of him, its window glowing brightly against the cold greyness outside - what would he want from the people in it, when they opened their door to him? What would they want from him?

He had come away from the city - run away, in fact, though he hated to admit that to himself, hated to admit that each of his trips to the mountains had been an act of escape from the monster city that had defeated him - to find purity in the mountain air, to wash himself clean with it, to unload into it the toxins that had accumulated in his soul over the past few years. Would he, then, pollute the mountains?

It would be criminal to do so, and was that why the bird had called so menacingly? But then, suppose the mountains could absorb all the poison of his soul, and of many other souls like his, and turn these into things that are good and useful, the way the Dhapa dump had been, silently and out of the city's sight, turning garbage into compost, which ultimately fed the city through the vegetables that were grown on it? But the process would involve the expenditure of some energy on his part - both physical and mental energy. The mountains were not for the weak. Was he equal to them?

These questions had never suggested themselves in the past, and he had roamed the mountains somewhat like a window-shopper roaming the streets, looking into shop windows, walking into some of the stores to look around, maybe even ask a couple of prices, then strolling casually out, only to stop and look into another window or amble into another shop. But this time the mountains seemed unwilling to let him have it so easy. The questions arrived thick and fast, more or less all at once, and hovered about him like a flock of birds flapping their wings and calling out in an unsettling way, demanding to be fed with answers. Sumit, suddenly brave, promised to answer them, lifted the rucksack onto his back, strode up to the house and knocked on the door.

The door was opened by a woman in a baku. Heavyset and sixtyish, her face was richly patterned with lines that deepened when she smiled at him. Wondering if this was the place the driver meant, he said he was looking for a room for the night. Showing no surprise - it was as if she had been expecting him - the woman stood aside and waved him in.

Earlier in the morning, Sumit had discovered that the Dorji property sat on the border between India and Nepal. The house itself and the toilet meant for the use of hikers were in India, but the trekkers' hut was in Nepal, and so were two sturdy but seedy-looking structures - a hut for the servants and a shed for the family's yaks and cows.

He would not have known this if a little cement pillar, about a yard high, had not attracted his attention. It stood on the edge of the Dorjis' yard, by the Maneybhanjang-Sandakhu trail, which divided the family's land in two. The cement had been whitewashed and something written over the white in black, but years of rain and snow had turned the writing illegible, the whitewash itself was worn in places, showing the grey cement underneath, and the whole pillar was full of names scrawled by children with charcoal. Sumit had asked Mr Dorji what it was meant for, and was told that it was a border pillar put up by the Government of India. That piece of information should have impressed him with the weight of authority it carried, and that of the history of kings and nations, but Sumit was surprised to see how light it seemed, almost bubble-like, nearly blending with the background of the fern-lined edge of the track, perhaps because of the children's scrawl and the job done by rain and snow.

Now, as he walked behind his guide in the sun, he had no idea where he was - in India or Nepal - but it did not matter. There were no more pillars in sight, nothing to tell travellers where the border might be and if there were any restrictions on crossing it. The three or four villagers he met on the way were vague about the country they were in at any point of time and said that the track cut repeatedly back and forth across the border. Rather, the border kept cutting back and forth across the track, since the latter had existed as a yak herders' trail since time immemorial, though the border had not.

As the path began to climb, Sumit found his mind empty of borders, countries, history and authority. All that remained, like the essence of something that precedes thought, was the effort to keep moving up the mountain. The struggles that make up the continuous crisis of the city - a crisis that is not an aberration but an integral part of life in the city - and had dogged him to the Dorjis' home, had left silently without letting him know. He was suddenly empty of the battle to make every moment count not for itself but for some other moment, for something or the other, even if this something was only sleep, which was a necessity and not simply a way of being, since he needed it to make the waking moments, which would follow, count for other things. He was empty of the struggle to pit the power of every moment against the agendas which other people, or society, or God (in whose existence he did not believe) brought to his life.

Sumit was now one with the mountain, with the rise of the earth, the hardness and the contours of the rocks under his feet, the fresh smell of the air, the clear light, the soft swish of the breeze blowing through the trees, the smell of wet leaves in the air. The mountain had no agenda, and the effort to climb it was an act not of pitting himself against it but of making himself part of it and making it part of himself.

This - to leave, for a while, the city, the domain of history and all that it had brought, and to become one with the prehistoric earth, from which he had come, to which he felt he belonged, and to which he would return physically one day - is what he had been dreaming of. This is what had drawn him to the mountains, but it was not an easy embrace. He was breathing hard, so hard that he could hear it himself and there was a burning sensation in his nostrils. A little later, he caught himself breathing through the mouth and stopped, remembering this was a sure way to lose his breath quickly. With lips pressed together, he started consciously to breathe through his nose again. On this stretch, the trail was completely overhung by trees and Sumit was moving through their cool shade over a cushion of fallen leaves made soggy by the night's rain, but he was still hot under his jacket and was sweating profusely.

But he had to change into dry clothes first, and to do so, to go out into the open again, into the cold wet world from which he had just escaped. Mrs Dorji asked him to change in her bedroom, but he did not want to invade his hosts' privacy and insisted on going to the trekkers' hut, which now seemed miles away, either because he was ill or because he now knew that it was in another country, or both.

When he came back into the living room, clean and bright unlike the one that had been his prison in Gairibas, Sumit flopped down on the divan, unable to stand any longer. Mr Dorji, who had finished his evening prayer, noticed that something was wrong, and told him to go to bed and to cover himself well with the quilt. They wanted to give him tea but he refused, shivering even though he was fully clothed under the quilt, and asked for a glass of rokshi instead. When it was brought, however, he could not drink it after two sips, which he needed an effort to swallow, and left the glass standing on the floor.

He sat up with a start, wondering whether a landslide was taking the house down into the gorge with it, but everything seemed stable and the house was silent, except for a soft snore coming from the Dorjis' room.

Reassured, he closed his eyes again, and was soon riding a bicycle with enormous wheels down a trail that looked familiar, was as rocky as the one he had taken to Gairibas and back, but much more treacherous. Though he seemed to have seen the place before, he did not know where it was. But he wasn't curious and, somehow, it seemed natural that he should find himself there. The only thought that preoccupied him was that he could not stop or get off the bike, and had to go on riding it. The trail was extremely narrow, no more than six or seven inches wide at places, and hugged a steep mountainside over a deep canyon. Its cliffside edge was overgrown with grass and Sumit was never sure when his wheels were going to leave solid ground and sink into the soft, airy grass to take him plunging into the gorge. The wheels were so high that he seemed to be looking at the trail from the roof of a house and there was no question of taking his feet off the pedals to set them down on the ground, as it was so far below him. To keep from falling into the canyon, he had no option but to keep riding, which he did with increasing anxiety. Then, rounding a bend, he saw a little girl of seven or eight ahead, riding downhill like him, on a bike that was smaller than his but of the same monstrous proportions with respect to her size. He could not see her face, because her back was towards him, but knew that she was his daughter, and it did not surprise him that she had suddenly grown years older than her real age. She gave no sign of knowing that he was behind her, and clutched the handlebars tightly, her thin shoulders hunched in fear, as her bike careened down the track under the pull of gravity. Sumit wanted to tell her that she must relax to keep her balance, that she would fall if her muscles were tense and her body failed to shift its weight continuously with the demands of the trail, but he seemed to have lost his voice and nothing but a low rasping sound would come out of his lips, only to be drowned out by the wind howling over rocks jutting out of the mountain, which rose steeply out of sight like a monster wall. For a moment, he thought the child was going to fall, but she managed to ride on, and Sumit looked for ways to catch hold of her and throw her onto safe ground, clear off the murderous bicycle. But there was no safe ground anywhere, just the trail, now straight, now winding, but always narrow and rocky, stretching endlessly over the bottomless canyon. Even though he could not take her off the trail, he knew that in some way, his presence behind her was helping her to hold on, had given her some protection from gravity and from herself. For a moment, Sumit felt tired, and wanted to give up the effort to keep his balance, to let the bicycle take him wherever it might. He looked down into the gorge, and saw a thin, winding, whitish line at the bottom, obviously a river. It seemed to be surging upwards to meet him, and someone was calling his name from the void below, which looked cool and inviting. But then he remembered the girl and looked up at the trail to reassure himself that she was safe, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Sumit sat up again, in a sweat, convinced that he was really falling into the gorge this time, but found himself on the divan. The house slept on, and he was afraid to give vent to a cough that surged up from his chest, in which he felt a stabbing pain. He was thirsty and short of breath. Remembering that Mrs Dorji had left a bottle of lukewarm water by his bed, he took a few gulps and was relieved to see that it had cooled but was not cold. His chest and throat soothed, Sumit went back to bed.

Mrs Dorji gave him the green concoction again, and asked what he would like to eat for breakfast but he wasn't hungry. He had had no bowel movement whatsoever for three days and his stomach was full of gas. He spent the day in bed, bothered by the memory of the bicycle ride. He could not stop wondering where he had been, and what had become of the girl. It bothered him, also, that he had not been able to see her face. From behind, her small body had looked a picture of pure terror, but he wanted to know if she had been crying or screaming - he had not heard her voice, since the wind must have drowned it out even if she had been crying. He was filled with regret to think that the two of them had been riding in the same direction - had they been riding towards each other, she would have fallen into his arms - but, what then? In all probability, the impact would simply have plunged them into the gorge together - but maybe not, maybe there would have been a way to hold on to the rocks on the side of the mountain, kick the bikes away into the gorge, climb slowly down to the trail with her and make his way to safer ground on foot, leading her carefully by the hand.

Towards evening, when his fever was rising again and he thought he saw a flock of strange black birds with yellow bands on their beaks fluttering about the closed window by his bed, trying to get in - he thought they had questions to ask, and wondered what these were - a young man arrived from Darjeeling. He turned out to be the Dorjis' youngest son, and had brought a hired Landrover loaded with sanitary ware, fittings and other construction material for a new bathroom, which was being added to the house.