That year of budget travel

I was always hungry and grew thin.

In Rishikesh you caught a bad cold

and stayed in bed in the concrete hotel

while I would walk once a day

to the restaurant on the jeep turning-circle,

order mattar paneer for 20 rupees, and sit

spooning up the peas, the lumps

of cheese in the rich spicy sauce

while the jeeps backed and belched

diesel fumes into the dim green room.

That was my favourite meal in India.

Just along the road was the ashram where

the Beatles sat at the feet of the Maharishi,

now abandoned, overgrown.

As you grew better we’d go for coffee,

pastry at the German bakery, nestled

on the shoulder of the suspension bridge,

the river beneath running high, cafe au lait

with spring meltwater and glacial dust.

One day we risked it, climbed down the bank

and holding the chain, immersed ourselves:

you to the neck, but I ducked

all the way under, in that icy water,

laced with sewage from the mountain villages.

Worth it to be cleansed, wholly, of my sins.