I.

At the airport, soldiers held guns with peeling paint as they talked and smoked. I took a tuk-tuk through the streets of Srinagar to the ghat, where men tugged at my shirt, pointed at boats and showed off fabrics. ‘Shikara, shikara!’ some shouted. One affected an English accent. ‘Where are you going? I’m from England. Lovely jubbly. Top banana.’

I could see the stillness of the lake beyond these men, and it seemed the frenzied activity was the price you paid to reach it. After months travelling across the country, I yearned for that rarity in India: silence.

With the rhythm of the oar hitting the water, and the vista of steep, misty mountains, I felt at peace. But no sooner had we arrived at the houseboat, the boatman declared there was a ‘problem’. ‘You move to other houseboat,’ he said. ‘It’s the same, same. Don’t worry.’ The other houseboat wasn’t the same in the slightest, of course: the first one had a chandelier and colourful Persian rugs, whereas the new one had wooden panels missing from much of the floor.

While unpacking, I was still finding it difficult to breathe. At a pharmacy nearby, the man said, ‘You should visit the hospital. That’s my opinion.’

A week previously, as we ascended the moon-like mountains along the Leh-Manali Highway, I struggled to breathe and felt dizzy. I vomited. At the hospital in Leh, the doctor said my oxygen levels were in the eighties. ‘Your blood isn’t carrying enough oxygen to your organs,’ he said. I thought the stain on my blanket was chocolate but, when the nurse stabbed the bloody needle of the injection into the bed, I knew it was blood.

I had a flight to catch, so I took off my mask and hitched a ride to the airport in the inky, silent night. ‘Kashmir is full of trees and lush mountains,’ the driver said. ‘The plants can breathe there. It will be good for you.’

In Srinagar, I took a rickshaw to the Khyber Medical Institute. ‘Khyber’ intrigued me, suggesting ancient journeys and conquest. Outside the hospital, men stood in the heat, leaning on rickshaws. The doctor was short with swift, impatient gestures. ‘Pneumonia!’ he said. ‘And it’s bad.’ 

In a final flourish, he pointed to the X-ray and smiled. ‘As you can see, it’s already spread aggressively through your lungs.’ He advised I go to A&E immediately. There were elderly people there, some wailing in pain, others lying silently, seemingly reaching for the idea of an eternal self that transcends the perishable body. Without gloves, the nurse injected me and stuck the bloody needle into the bed.

II.

So began my routine in Kashmir. Each morning and afternoon, I’d take a journey to the hospital that I came to think of as my own Khyber Pass: a shikara to the ghat, then a rickshaw around the lake’s outer edge where the breeze brushed my face and I would feel alive.

Liquid coursing through my body made me aware of it. I suggested the nurses wear gloves, and they looked at each other and smiled. They placed a catheter on my hand, which strangers pointed at and said things like, ‘Friend! What’s that?’ or ‘What happened, sir? Hand!’ Or, sometimes more compassionately, ‘Are you OK?’ 

One day, a teenage boy in the neighbouring houseboat stared at my catheter as I unpacked my laundry. ‘Are you just going to stare at it all day?’ I said. His mother whispered to him and they went inside.

The following day, a shikara was sailing near mine, and I heard my boatman say ‘Khyber’ to the other boatman. ‘What did he say?’ I demanded. ‘Did he ask about my health?’

‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘He asked where you go.’

‘He asked about my health,’ I said. ‘I know it.’

The family in the other boat waved at me. ‘Smile!’ the mother said, pointing a camera at me.

‘No!’ I said. ‘Don’t take a picture of me.’

She put the camera down and turned away, but the other boatman continued staring at me – at my hand, I suspected.

Later, a boatman in another boat asked where I was from.

‘Nowhere!’ I shouted.

‘Ah, Norway!’ he said and sailed off.

Between appointments, sometimes I’d call Amelia or my sister, who recommended eating plain things. Or I’d sit still in my room and fail to practise what I’d learned in Dharamshala (focusing on my breath just made me think of pneumonia). But mostly I lazed on the veranda, watching the goings-on of the lake. A boat picked up clothes and later dropped them off, and other boats sold fruit and vegetables. Everything you expected in a town – laundry services, a market, food stalls, joshing between boatmen, questions about my health – happened here, on the water.

Every morning, I’d get into a thing with the man at the French bakery opposite the ghat. I’d ask whether the chocolate croissants were fresh, he’d say they were, I’d say they didn’t look like it and he’d say, ‘Why would I lie?’ I’d say the display has been sitting there for a while, and he’d say, yes, that one’s not fresh, but the others are. It would end there, with my not buying anything and our exchanging glances. But it became a ritual, and one I think we both enjoyed, for we could exorcise our frustrations: his with entitled tourists like me, and mine with pneumonia.

III.

At the beginning, John, the boatowner, and I would talk. He said he used to live in Plaistow and sometimes thought of returning to England. He said Kashmir didn’t want to be part of India or Pakistan, that it was its own country. The boys on the boat would follow him, and he’d give them instructions in languid, listless tones.

After a few days, we stopped talking, and I suspected he was avoiding me. Every evening, he would smoke with the boys outside my room. One night I said, ‘John, do you mind not smoking so near my room? I’m worried about my lungs.’

‘You need to relax, man!’ he said. ‘That’s the only way you’re going to get better.’

I would pace the boat in paranoid states, wondering if John and his acolytes were going to throw me off it, and this would play out in my dreams. But if they had thrown me overboard, perhaps I would have found a better houseboat.

After the disagreement with John, I took one of the lake tours that half of Kashmir had tried to sell me. Gliding towards the floating market, I felt a wave of peace. Duckweed was scattered across the water.

‘Perhaps you could drop me off at a different houseboat,’ I said to the boatman, who worked for John.

‘A different boat?’

‘Yes – just so I can see it. If I move, I can discuss it with John later.’

He turned to me, his eyes sharp and still. ‘Which houseboat?’

‘I don’t know one offhand,’ I said. ‘Maybe you know one?’

He turned back towards the water. ‘Not possible!’

On my final night in Kashmir, I called Amelia. She said she’d got a part-time production job and was going to the park more to be closer to nature. ‘Whenever I return from holiday, it’s like it was a long dream,’ she said. ‘It never feels real.’ She asked where I was going next, and I said I didn’t know. ‘Why do you always want to move?’ she asked.