“Sometimes we have to retreat to return.” So says Iti, who is living in Gurgaon but is far from happy. A freelance editor, struggling to make it as an author, her life is a mess. Feeling lost and unsuccessful, particularly compared to her more successful classmates, who are rich and married while she lives alone consumed by a “pointless bitter anger, this bile that inhabits me.” As Iti spends each day looking at the WhatsApp chats of her former classmates, showing off their trappings of success, she comes to the conclusion that something has to change. Unable to bear the malaise of her life anymore, she flees Delhi for home. Home is a small village in Kumaon, nestled in the foothills of the Himalaya and the place where Iti had some of her happiest childhood memories.