Just two legs, the feet submerged, a pair of chappals on the bank behind, a raw sewage outlet running into the water just beyond where he stoops down to lift handfuls of the river water over his head, washing his face, his neck, his chest and arms, his legs right up to where his lungi loops over his hip bones.

Huddled around this bather are family groups wrapped up like those king size basin ki ladoo: balaclavas popping off the tops of their heads, tracksuits under jerseys, under cardigans, under ski-jackets, puffball families reaching for biscuits, chai, dates, chocolate, any food fuel available to give comfort, succour and calorie-courage enough to be able to mount the mules that will carry them on the pilgrimage they have come to make. They move around the almost-naked man like a herd as he finishes his freezing ablutions. They shout at each other:

‘Who used all the hot water? Who made the bad stink in the pot? Where is chai? What time are we taking off?’

The bather lifts a final handful of water and throws it over his head. Some of it catches a young, overly-layered girl behind him. She jumps out of the way, in as much as anyone can jump when wrapped in logo’d swaddling bands. Her family laughs, the almost naked man laughs.

It is the Durga Puja holiday and the family is from West Bengal, their fluffed up coats and imported biscuits from some aspirational emporium, Park Street, Uptown Cal/Kol (the old and the new, or the new and the old, take your pick). The bather is from Bihar. State lines, acres of flesh, and at least five layers of clothing separate them, but beside the Ganges at Gangotri at 7am in the October mist they are all part of the same pilgrimage.

They have come together after long journeys. Rice and sloppy subji served Indian Railways casual style, feet crossed on the seat, shoes underneath, neat and side-by-side. Across West Bengal, Bihar, chai, chai, Uttar Pradesh. Quick stop with relis-in-Delhi, and Auntie Rani’s chola bhatura gobbled double quick time, and back to the station scrum. Bodies under blankets, faces covered, like the dead. India Today and Stardust bought from the man with one eye and a lop-sided smile at the magazine stand beside pungent urinals and a group of smoking soldiers. The snoring Sird on the bunk above, shunting and grinding his way through the night above his netted beard. Chai, chai, Uttaranachal, Rishikesh, Spirituality Central. They’re on their way, all joined together by a glorious knowingness of where they are going, and bad, bad wind from Auntiejis chola bhatura gobbled too quick.

Did we lose along the way the thing they still have, the sense of the journey? Are we now transiting too fast from Heathrow or JFK to the Maldives, to the resort with private villas? Hard fought corporate wars for privacy at a price, individual pools, raked sand, and a Jacuzzi for champagne and bubbles with your bubbles as the sun goes down—not at all like Auntieji’s bad, bad bhatura bubbles through the night on the bottom bunk. What are we trying to stitch together in just fourteen days? The fall out from work, the failure to communicate with each other at the end of each sapping day, the overload of life, chip-chipping away, year in, year out, so that one Black Card holiday melts into another, one resort into the next, each one distinguishable only for the difference in length of the wine list at the top-of-the-range restaurant, or by how bad the fight was on the second last day. Do we even remember what we were fighting about? Are we investing too much in those manicured places, seeking something that is not to be found in the spa or at the watersports centre, expecting to find salvation in a Jacuzzi with a view? When and why did we start competitive holidaying?

There is no fluff around the views in among the Himalayas, no orchids on pillows in a tent, no scent of frangipani