Padmasambhava. I've been following without knowing for so long it isn't funny. First Nako and then Gurudongmar, I want to go back and I want to go to Rewalsar and wherever else it is but mainly I want to go to a lake. I want to be back like I was at Nako, climbing up dusty hillside till I reached a tree and under the tree I found a skull, dog or fox, can't be sure. And under the tree I sat and held the skull in my palm and thought about the noxious-looking potatoes with stalks sprouting out of them that the villagers had sold us. Carbide the proprietor at the half-constructed guest house was convinced they were poisonous. We were convinced he was whining was because he wouldn't get paid fully for dinner. Mr Carbide had a face I can't remember, the name stays because he was cocksure and explosive and snuck up on us when we didn't expect it. Wasn't my idea, the name.

Also under the tree I remember that moment of indecision, whether to take off jacket or not in the face of mild sunshine getting cloying and warm. Mostly that morning stood for nothing, everyone isn't Padmasambhava. No epiphanies. Just a feeling of invincibility, but in an offhand way, I can't explain. Setting loose pebbles rolling downhill to the lake and then worrying about landslides. Feeling the weight of the skull make my palm all sweaty and worrying about being morbid.

All the times I've travelled with adults I've been to places I want to revisit now because they aren't cities. Being dropped down at 14000 feet versus planning the getting-there bit. Getting permission to walk around alone versus getting permits to cross a checkpost. Maybe I want to go back so I can obsess over myself in ways I don't do here. How long before they miss me? When will they call out? The mountainside's witness to the fact that you may end up a skull among boulders but the mountains will remain, and what if no one misses you, that sort of thing. Not epiphanies but neuroses.

Eight years later all that remain are trigger-words. Padmasambhava. Skull. Potatoes. Aquamarine lake, headache. Ditto for Gurudongmar, only Colder and More Blue and Fluttering Flags and Sikh Shrine. There's always a chance I haven't forgotten how they look, but I won't know till I see them again, landscapes in old photographs always look alien. If I waste this June, P, I'll never forgive myself. But then I miss out on the other lakes I could sit by, that's what it all boils down to in the end, really.

Hello, prolix post, beg pardon.