It takes a week to sort, a week in which the doctors deign to let me watch a few minor surgeries while Kerry goes to the beach on local buses and comes back sunburned and full of stories. She makes friends with families in the relatives’ block where we’re staying, plays cricket with the kids in the corridor, and we share their meals in the evening: freshly made curries loaded with coconut and spice. I develop a taste for the heat. It helps to conceal the metallic taste in my mouth that I suspect is caused by drug withdrawal.

Some nights I sleep badly, too, but I know I must see this through.

‘You’ve changed, Kerry,’ I say, as we queue in the local medical centre to be given the extra jabs we need for a rural placement. ‘When we were at school, you would never have chatted to all those strangers.’

‘True. My job has cured me of being shy.’ She smiles. ‘But you’re exactly the same as you were then.’

Ouch. ‘Come on. Would the old Tim be preparing for a dangerous mission in the jungle?’

She laughs but we both know I’d have been on the next plane home if she hadn’t been here. She makes me a better, braver person. But what do I do for her? ‘I’m not thrilled at the opportunity to get murdered in a tribal conflict I’ve never heard of.’

‘It can’t be that dangerous or no one would go there,’ she says, ‘and as for the jungle, I bet they’re exaggerating . . .’

It is the jungle. It feels dangerous. And far from being ‘a little north’ as Mr Mukherjee suggested, our new base is a five-hour flight and a railway journey to the nearest town, then a couple more hours in a battered jeep.

Everything here is red or green: dry earth and dense forest. The heat and humidity are as intense as Kerala, though judging from the parched-looking bamboo and teak trees, the monsoon hasn’t yet arrived.

We pass villages and rice paddies, women in short saris and sometimes children running after our jeep and waving. Kerry suggests stopping to hand out some of the pens and stickers we brought as gifts, but the driver shakes his head.

‘Not here.’

I start to see the signs that this is not a peaceful place. Our driver stops twice when commanded to by baby-faced soldiers, younger than Kerry and me. They ask questions, rifles hanging from their shoulders, and seem bemused by our decision to come here. I can’t imagine theirs is a desirable posting. I never realized there were conflicts like this in India.