It has been a few days since he finished the enlightenment intensive. Something has changed, there’s no doubt about it. He feels lighter. He feels pretty good. Also, Abhi has decided that K is a better name than Komal. So K it is. About this, too, K feels happier, lighter.

In the city, K and Abhi hire motorbikes, and then, together with Rani and Yamini, they ride out to the Karla Caves at Lonavala. It takes two hours, stopping here and there.

Between K and Yamini nothing official has happened, but there is a definite playfulness to Yamini’s manner now that gives K hope. And yet it is hard to imagine actually sleeping with her. It would be like embracing a sculpture. And now she is pressed into him on the back of the motorbike, and her arms are wrapped around him.

It is a relief to be away from the ashram for a while, too, to be in the world again, speeding through Indian villages, past goats, chickens, children, crows with their mouths open in the heat. He thinks, As soon as I get off this motorbike I will get down on my hands and knees and kiss the ground.

My India, he thinks.

Workers stand in the fields to watch them pass — two orange flashes blasting through the countryside.

The day is hot and the caves, when they finally get there, astonish them. A Buddhist prayer hall, like a giant ribcage carved from the mountain itself more than two thousand years ago. They walk slowly uphill, sweating. On the path leading up the mountain, a man missing half an arm is sweeping. He begs by cupping the elbow of his mutilated arm in his remaining hand.

At the top of the hill, at the entrance to the prayer hall, Rani makes them stop so she can take a photo of each of them standing there. She has bought a camera from an Israeli sannyasin, and her plan is to fund her trip by taking photographs of mountains and temples, which she can sell to publications in the United States. If it weren’t for her visa expiring, she’d never have to leave India again, she says.

There is a waterfall nearby, and all four of them take off their clothes and stand naked beneath the rushing water, until they are discovered by a group of local boys. Then they hurriedly dress again and sit down to eat lunch on the rocks. They unwrap the greasy parcels and eat hungrily, Indian pastries, daubs of sticky rice, Indian sweets dripping with honey, warm cola.

The boys approach them. Five intense little kids carrying big sticks. Their oversized trousers drag in the dust. ‘Money,’ the boys say, seriously. ‘Hello money.’