During his journey up from Shimla, Laks had crossed paths with all three of these women glancingly, enough to follow their stories at a remove. Pippa was a lanky, freckled Kiwi. Bella was Argentinean. Sue—presumably an Anglicized version of her real name—was Korean. They’d not been together at the time. But backpackers in general and women in particular formed ad hoc alliances when they discovered, in the dining room of a hostel or the lobby of a bus station, that they were going the same way. This looked to be one of those. They could watch one another’s backs when they weren’t huddling together for warmth.