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“Cool.” His gaze slips from my face to my legs. “Did you fall over on your way up the mountain?”
“Yeah, how did—”
“Your trousers are ripped.” He gently runs a finger over the tear in my dusty cotton trousers. I flinch, even though the skin on my knee is no longer tender. “Sorry, didn’t mean to hurt you.” He pulls his hand away sharply. “If it still hurts, Sally in the kitchen has got a first aid kit.”
“It’s fine, honestly.”
“Okay.” He smiles warmly and stands up. Then he crosses the room, picks up a beanbag and plonks it in front of us. “So.” He opens his hands wide. “Welcome to Ekanta Yatra. I know you’ve all had a look at the website so I’ll keep this brief, because I know you’ll all be gagging to have a shower or a sleep, or whatever.
“I founded Ekanta Yatra three years ago, along with Isis, Cera and Johan – you’ll meet them soon. We were all travelling separately and became friends when we found ourselves staying in the same guest house in Pokhara. We were all looking for somewhere that would be a retreat from the world, and we pooled what little money we had and bought this place. It was basically a shack when we bought it.”
“It looks lovely now,” Leanne says, and Isaac smiles at her.
“Cheers, we’ve worked hard. Johan’s the big hulking Swede you’ll see shuffling about. He’s in charge of the vegetable patch and the animals – anything outside, basically. Isis is a short, grey-haired woman. She’s got a background in massage and holistic therapies, so she’s your go-to woman for your facials and aromatherapy sessions. Cera’s the tall, elegant woman you’ll see drifting about. She keeps the place running efficiently and makes sure everything is clean and tidy and that the kitchen’s got all the supplies it needs. And I’m Isaac. I run the meditation sessions and the seminars and, um … I make a mean cup of chai, too.”
Everyone laughs.
“That’s about it, basically. Everything else you need to know is in your welcome packs on your beds.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a small green tin. He prises off the lid and offers us the contents – half a dozen hand-rolled cigarettes. “Anyone want one?”
Leanne’s smile slips. “But we’re in a pagoda. I thought smoking … well, I thought you couldn’t.”
“We meditate in here,” Isaac says, a rollie dangling from his lower lip, “and we do yoga outside on the patio, and all these sort of things, but this isn’t a religious retreat. We’re a community of people making a life for ourselves outside of mainstream society.”
He pauses to blow a stream of smoke up towards the ceiling. “When you look in your welcome pack, you’ll see that we’ve got set times for meals and meditations and seminars, but what you guys choose to do is up to you. You can get as involved as you like, or not get involved at all. Ekanta Yatra is a place where you can escape from all the stresses and strains of everyday life and just be. There’s a lot the outside world could learn from the way we live here.”
“I’m always up for learning new things.” Daisy slips off her beanbag and crawls towards Isaac, slinking through the gap between Al and Leanne like a cat. She takes a cigarette from Isaac’s tin and looks up at him expectantly, the cigarette dangling from her lips.
“I think you could all learn a lot.” He lights her cigarette but his eyes are on me.
“Hi, girls,” says a voice behind us, and Isaac glances away.
A tall, willowy woman with pale lips and dreadlocks the colour of dark sand twisted on top of her head is standing in the doorway. She makes her way towards us, drifting through the room barefoot, her sari-like skirt sweeping the wood as she walks, her beaded necklace reaching down to her bare navel. Her smile is beatific, her eyes soft and compassionate. There’s a serenity about her that’s mesmerising.
“Hello,” she says, her benign gaze flitting over each of our faces as she stops next to Isaac. She reaches out a hand and ruffles his hair then glances at Daisy. Her smile widens. “I’m Cera. I look after the house, so if there’s a problem with the solar showers, or you need a snack between mealtimes, or anything else, just let me know.”
“Hi!” I raise a hand in greeting. Al and Leanne do the same.
“I’ll show you where you’ll all be sleeping in a few moments,” Cera continues, “and then I’ll give you the guided tour, but first, if you could all give me your passports, please.”
“They think we’re going to skip off into the night without paying,” Al says. She catches my eye and grins. Six years ago, the four of us hitchhiked up to Edinburgh from Newcastle and stayed in a B&B run by the snootiest woman on earth. The bathroom was grotty, the sheets were stained and the bedroom curtains smelled of rotten eggs, but she refused to give us a different room when we requested one. The woman just sniffed, said something about bloody students and stalked off. We went out drinking until 4 a.m., returned to get our bags and left without paying. It was Daisy’s idea, of course, but the rest of us didn’t need much persuading. It wasn’t as though we’d actually slept there, was it?
“You’ll have to get past me first,” Isaac says, and winks at Al. Then he stretches his arms above his head and stands up. “I’ll leave you to it, then, Cera,” he says, before strolling across the room, his cigarette still dangling from his fingertips. He raises a hand as he reaches the doorway. “See you later, girls!”
“Bye, then, Isaac!” Daisy calls from beside his abandoned beanbag. If she were a dog, she’d be bristling. The next couple of weeks are certainly going to be interesting; Daisy doesn’t take kindly to rejection.
“Wow.” Daisy peers around the door to the shower block then glances back at us. “The website wasn’t lying when it said the living accommodation is basic. There’s a kitchen sink in here. Literally.”
“Let me see.” She steps out of the way so I can take a look, too. She’s right. There are two shower cubicles, each with a rustic-looking door, two toilets with equally basic doors and, right at the end of the room, there’s a kitchen sink with a colourful mosaic-framed circular mirror hanging above it.
“Are they sit-down toilets or holes in the floor?” Al shouts out.
I step into the shower block and push at one of the toilet doors. “Proper toilets.”
“Well, that’s something.” Daisy rolls her eyes and walks back into the girls’ dormitory. She stands beside the mattress she’s been allocated in the corner of the room and nudges it with the toe of her flip-flop. “At least we had proper beds at boarding school. God knows what’s going to crawl over me in the middle of the night.”
“Don’t be like that.” Leanne, sitting cross-legged on the mattress beside her, slaps her guidebook shut.
“Yeah, come on, Dais.” Al looks up from the cigarette she’s rolling. “It’s not like we didn’t expect to rough it. We’re in Nepal, not the Hilton.”
“Roughing it is fine. Sharing a room with you guys is fine. But this?” She gestures at rough, cherry-red wooden walls and the row of mattresses on each side of the room. “It’s like a sheep shed, piling all the women into one room together. God knows who we’re sharing with.”
“Daisy …” I move to put an arm around her then change my mind. The best way to deal with her when she’s in this kind of mood is to ignore it. She’s barely said a word since Isaac left us in the meditation room – not when Cera showed us the rustic dining room, the basic kitchen, the yoga patio, the orchard, the vegetable patch, the goat enclosure, the chicken pen or the massage huts – and she was the only one of us not to squeal with excitement when we were led down to the river and the waterfall. The only time the vaguest flicker of interest registered on her face was when we returned to the house and Cera gestured to the walkway to the right and said it led to the boys’ dormitories. It vanished when we were led to the left. It’s astonishing, really. We travel halfway around the world to one of the most breathtakingly beautiful mountain ranges in Asia, and she’s in a huff because Isaac didn’t flirt back with her. I’d laugh if she wasn’t my best friend.
“I bet the other women snore,” Daisy says. “And smell.”
“Well, you’ll be in good company, then,” Al says. “I couldn’t sleep for all your farting and snoring last night.”
“Sod off, Al,” Daisy says, but the edges of her lips twitch into a smile. She yanks her sleeping bag from its sheath, lies down on top of the mattress and starts rummaging around in her backpack. “Who fancies a shot of lemon voddy? I think we’ve earned it.”
Everyone holds up a hand.
“Have you seen this?” Leanne waves the welcome pack in the air. “There are three yoga sessions a day, right after meditation. I’m thinking I’ll do two a day – one in the morning, one in the evening.”
“Why the hell would you want to do that?” Al licks the Rizla, rolls the cigarette over itself and sticks it behind her ear. “Unless you want to add supremely bendy to your advert.”
“What advert?”
“The one you put in phone boxes in London.”
“Oh, ha ha. Seriously, are any of you up for meditation or yoga?” Leanne persists.
“Nope.” Al shakes her head. “I intend to sit on my arse and do precisely nothing for two weeks.”
“Daisy?”
Daisy pours vodka into the bottle lid and knocks it back. She winces then looks at Leanne. “Did you say something?”
“I asked if you want to try a bit of meditation or yoga.”
“Maybe.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Do many men do yoga? Does Isaac?” She glances at me. It’s only a split-second look but it’s enough to confirm my suspicions about her bad mood.
She squeals as a balled pair of socks hits her square between the eyes.
“You are SO boring!” Al chucks another pair of socks at her, this time clipping Daisy’s left ear. “Men, men, men, men, men. Give me a shot of that vodka then let’s go down to the river. Anyone up for skinny-dipping?”
Chapter 12 (#ulink_1f1adf96-81bf-5ed7-bc47-8f94b1465777)
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?” Al says as she stirs a pot of dahl so vigorously that hot, gloopy lentils threaten to overflow the rim of the saucepan.
“Because someone” – Daisy fake-glares at Leanne – “thought it would be nice to help out with the community. At five o’clock in the bloody morning.”
Everyone laughs, including Leanne, and I swipe at my eyes with my forearm. They’re smarting so much I can barely see for tears. Al and I have been chopping onions for the curry, and the mountain of vegetables in the sack on the floor doesn’t seem to be shrinking.
Three days have passed since we first arrived at Ekanta Yatra and we’ve spent the majority of our time outside, reading or sleeping in the many brightly coloured woven hammocks that hang from the plum and walnut trees in the orchard, doing yoga on the patio to the rear of the main house, and daring each other to stand in the waterfall for as long as possible, laughing and screaming as the icy cold water thunders onto our heads and freezes our bodies. It’s come as a shock to actually do some “work” again.
“This can’t all be for breakfast?” Al looks imploringly at Rajesh the chef, who’s sitting on a squat wooden stool peeling potatoes. His knees are spread wide, potato peelings sprinkling the top of his enormous stomach like hundreds and thousands on a cupcake.
“Yep. Takes a lot of food to fill thirty people.”
I put down my knife and wipe my face with the hem of my T-shirt. With no air conditioning, a window that’s so rotten it only opens a fraction of an inch, and curry-scented steam filling the room, it’s sauna-hot in here. Raj was already in the kitchen when Shona, one of the community members, shepherded us in. After Raj told us what he wanted us to do, he squatted down on the stool and started on the potatoes. This is the first time he’s spoken since, and the sound of his voice makes me relax, just the tiniest bit. There’s something very disconcerting about chatting away with someone sitting silently beside you, observing everything but not saying a word. There’s a lot of that here – community members drifting around, carrying bundles of God knows what from room to room, cleaning, meditating in random places, pausing in doorways. They rarely speak to us but they’re always watching, always listening. I can’t shake the feeling that they’re waiting for us to do something, but what, I have no idea.
“And you do this every day?” I ask. “Work in the kitchen?”
“Of course. It’s my job.”
“You wouldn’t rather be out in the garden, tending to vegetables, getting fresh air?”
Raj drops a peeled potato into the bucket at his feet and looks up at me, the knife dangling loosely from his hand. “I just told you, Emma. It’s my job.”
A bead of sweat appears in his hairline. It rolls down his forehead and disappears into the thick, bushy arch of one eyebrow. His nostrils flare, pulsing as though to a silent beat, as he continues to stare at me.
“Can we get some water?” Daisy asks, just when I can’t bear the weight of Raj’s gaze a second longer. “I’m gasping.”
“There’s water in the tap.” He gestures towards the sink. As he glances away, I feel unshackled.
“Ewwww.” Daisy wrinkles her nose. “You haven’t got any bottled stuff, have you?”
“Nope.” Raj shakes his head. “We’re running low on supplies. Ruth and Gabe, two members of the community, have gone to Pokhara to stock up. They should be back soon.” The tiniest of smiles lifts a corner of his mouth then vanishes. “Apparently.”
Standing outside one of the huts, I stifle a yawn. We were just preparing to crawl into our sleeping bags and pass out after kitchen duty finally ended, when Cera drifted into the girls’ dorm and told us that the huts had been prepared for our complimentary massages. None of us were going to turn that down, no matter how tired we were, so Al, Daisy and I dragged ourselves outside and down to the huts. Leanne stayed behind to attend a talk Isaac was giving on detoxing your mind. I think Al’s exact words to describe that decision were “fucking mental”.
“Hi, Emma.” Kane greets me as I yank open the wooden door to the hut and step inside. Not that there’s far to step. The hut can’t be much more than seven feet long and four feet wide. Everything is white – the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the pile of blankets fashioned into a narrow bed in the centre of the room. Even the candle, the solitary source of light, burning on a table in one corner of the room is white. The only things that aren’t white are the two circular metal rings screwed into the far corners of the hut. It seems I’m about to have a massage in what used to be a goat out-house.
Kane stands opposite me, his legs spread wide, his arms crossed over his broad chest, shadow obscuring half of his face.
“Come in, close the door behind you. Take a seat.” He gestures at the pile of blankets.
I do as I’m asked but I don’t pull the door fully closed. The air is thick with the scent of jasmine incense. It fills my throat, the smoky fragrance so cloying I can taste it. I eye Kane warily as he takes a seat himself, sitting cross-legged opposite me.
“Hi! I’m Kane.” He holds out a meaty hand for me to shake. He’s only an inch or two taller than me, and probably a couple of years younger, but with his shaved head and weighty frame, his presence dominates the hut.
“Emma.”
He smiles broadly as I shake his hand. It transforms his face. His heavy brow lifts and deep dimples appear on either side of his wide mouth, and any worries I may have had about sharing such a small space with a complete stranger dissipate.
“Have you ever had reflexology before, Emma?” he asks.
When I shake my head, he explains to me how all the parts of the body are connected to the feet and how, if I have a blockage in any particular area, he’ll be able to sense it.
“I’ve helped a lot of people,” he continues. “They’ve come to me with back pain, skin conditions, depression, IBS, the lot, and, with a course of treatments, I’ve helped them. Really helped them. Look at this …” He slides a book across the floor to me. “These are testimonials from the people I’ve treated. Have a look.”
I flick through page after page, words like “improved”, “transformed”, “magical” and “healed” jumping out at me. I’m just about to tell him about my panic attacks when he holds up a hand.
“Don’t tell me what’s wrong with you. I’ll know as soon as I touch your feet. Lie down for me, Emma, and slip off your flip-flops. I’ll begin by cleansing your feet.”
I close my eyes and try to relax as Kane rubs my feet with what feels like cold, wet towels and then slathers them with oil. I feel terrified and excited at the same time. Terrified that Kane may be able to sense why I have my panic attacks, and excited that he may be able to do something to relieve them. Now this is what I imagined when Leanne first mooted the idea of a retreat in Nepal – holistic treatments, massages and relaxation – not early starts, peeling potatoes and strange, staring men.
“You’re a kind person.” I jump at the sound of Kane’s voice and open my eyes. He’s still down at the other end of the hut, on his knees, pushing his thumbs into the balls of my feet. “You care about others but you feel taken for granted, sometimes.”
I try to reply but he shakes his head.
“I don’t want you to talk. You carry a lot of pain around with you but you don’t talk to anyone about it,” he continues as he presses his fingers into the pads of my toes. “You feel like you deserve to hurt, but you’re wrong. You must forgive yourself for what you did, Emma.”
I want to tell him that he’s full of shit, that he’s got the wrong person, but I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to. I’m floored by what he’s just told me. I don’t know how he’s picked up so much about me, but it’s all I can do to keep breathing.
“Okay.” He waggles first my left foot, then my right foot, from side to side. “Now let’s see what’s physically wrong with you. Tell me if anything I do hurts. If it does, don’t worry, that just means there’s congestion that needs to be cleared.
“How about this?” A single tear winds its way down the side of my face as he presses into the ball of my right foot, but the pressure has nothing to do with the reason I’m crying.
I shake my head to indicate “no”.
“This?”
He slides his fingers to the side of my foot, but there’s no pain so I shake my head again.
“How about here?”
I feel him jab at my ankle. “No.”
“Here?”
“No.”
Kane inhales noisily through his nose and my first thought is that I’m doing something wrong. I’m not responding as I should. Why doesn’t anything hurt?
“Here?”
I yelp as he prods a tender spot under my ankle. I spoke too soon.
“Family history of diabetes?”
I nod my head, astonished.
“And here?” I twitch as he rolls my calf under his hand. “Problems with your lungs?”
I nod again. He must have picked up on the fact I feel like I can’t breathe when I have a panic attack.
“And here?” His fingers dig into the soft, fleshy instep of my right foot. “Digestive problems,” he says, his tone jubilant, and I wince as he presses the same spot again. “Diarrhoea. Food passes right through you.”
