A rank of eager, kindly looking men mobbed me as I pushed through the ticket gate from the platform into the station building at Abu Road. They all carried enormous, black umbrellas, each trying to coax me to spend the night at his hotel. Every hotel in town, it seemed, had “nice and cheap rooms with every comfort”, and from the assortment offered I chose Mr Mukerji’s because he boasted a “hot, personal shower” as one of his specialties, something I felt was going to be more than necessary.

I had been sitting on the train from Delhi as it clattered South through Rajasthan during a late afternoon thunderstorm. Shooting up from the empty plain I spotted Mount Abu, the Hill Station once favoured by the English who lived in Gujarat back whenever, and my plan had been to take the bus to the top and rest for a few days. As the train chugged relentlessly toward the town I could see dense banks of mist that were sweeping up the sides of the mountain, and with visibility that bad I knew I wouldn’t be risking the bus ride up the narrow, muddy road that zigzagged back and forth through the thick, steamy forest growing out of the mountain slopes. At the same time I didn’t particularly want to spend the night in what, from the train, appeared to be an especially dirty town that lacked any interest for an outsider and could only justify its existence by processing travellers on their way from the train station to the Hill Station.

I stepped out of the station onto the road under the protection of Mr Mukerji’s giant umbrella to walk what he assured me was no more than a short distance to the hotel: within seconds the shelter of the umbrella became more of a concept than a concrete reality. Its black sails hinted more at the suggestion of protection rather than providing actual dryness itself, such was the force and volume of water seeping out of the grey haze sitting so oppressively a few feet above our heads. The rain fell so relentlessly that if there ever had been any drainage system in place in Abu Road it had just been quite overwhelmed, and we waded knee-deep through a brown, surging torrent to the other side of the road. The covered shop verandas that we climbed onto were only ankle-deep in the murky, fast-flowing water. They sheltered us for a while as we splashed and slipped along the length of the street until we had to venture out again into the full force of the storm. By then I was so comprehensively soaked that shelter from the rain was of no great benefit: I couldn’t get any wetter, and the only worry that kept me from thinking about how chillingly cold the world was becoming was the possibility of frightened, defensive snakes panicking among the jumble of debris that was collecting around my legs.