Kathmandu, Jan. 25 -- Shalini, the heroine of Indian author Madhuri Vijay's debut novel, is restless. Her mother has died, she has been fired from her job, and a close friend snubs her. Suddenly discovering a wooden figure gifted to her by a man, Bashir Ahmed, she decides to take a long, inadvisable trip to find him. Clinging to a folktale heard many years before, a disoriented Shalini ends up in a hamlet 6000 feet above sea level.

That is how we end up at the northernmost edge of the country, in the scenic, troubled lands of Jammu and Kashmir. Not in Srinagar and Gulmarg, romanticised by flower-laden boats and green hillocks, but in a tiny municipality, Kishtwar, and a day's journey away, in a rustic Himalayan village as dangerous as it...