Two young men came over to watch. They looked South Asian but, to judge from speech and attire, were working-class Englishmen. Laks guessed—correctly as it turned out—that they were Sikhs who were non-observant, at least when it came to hair, beard, and turban. They were at least wearing bracelets. Perhaps they were now trying to remedy that by letting their beards grow, or perhaps shaving had just been inconvenient for them during the last week or so. They had walking sticks, but in no other way did they seem to have any interest in backpacking just for backpacking’s sake. They introduced themselves as Sam and Jay, which Laks could guess were Anglicized variants of whatever traditional names appeared on their passports. Squinting through their own cigarette smoke, they appraised the stick-work of Laks and Gopinder with what seemed to be a discerning eye and asked questions that seemed extremely practical in nature.