The Bacillus, and the Art of Boredom

An illness in a Himalayan retreat was a proving-ground for parsing the frustrations of inertia from its small solaces

Sickness, frustration, a geographically diminished existence — it recently occurred to me that I had experienced something like this before.

I’d arrived in Delhi in mid-September 2010, as the monsoon was giving way to the clearer skies of fall. I had been on the move for nine months, first busing my way through the Middle East, then down Africa’s Great Rift Valley. I was trying to carve out a living as a writer, and I was in a hurry, probably too much so.

As such, I wasn’t too perturbed when an unfamiliar debilitation overtook me as I boarded a train to Kathgodam and India’s mountainous north. It was only when I reached the Khali Estate, a rambling colonial-era hotel in the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand state, that I realised it had portended something more serious. The next morning, on the day I was supposed to embark on a week-long trek around the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary, I could scarcely lift myself out of bed.

The walk wasn’t happening, that much was clear.

The nearest town was Almora, a picturesque hill station strewn along a ridge. On its main drag, I found a doctor sitting…