diary ⁽⁴⁾

People ask, sooner or later, why I do these climbs on a bicycle when there is a perfectly good motorcycle in the shed and a jeep road that covers the same distance in a third of the time. I used to answer with the honest…

The priest's hands keep finding the same four shapes in the smoke — thumb to two fingers, flat to the chest, open toward the flame, and back again — a sequence that means something to him and nothing to the dozen of us sitting cross-legged…

I arrived in Orchha without doing anything in particular, which seemed to be the correct way to arrive there. The road ended gently, as if unsure whether it ought to continue, and the town took over without announcement. I stood for a while under an…

I have noticed that hubris rarely announces itself. It does not arrive with a trumpet or a villain’s laugh. It comes quietly, dressed as confidence, speaking the language of experience. It says: I’ve been here before. It says: I know how this ends. And slowly,…