For 20 years, Alobar has been under the instruction of Buddhist monks at a lamasery, near a village among the Himalayan mountains called Samye. A newly arrived student, Kudra, is quickly judged to be a woman disguised as a boy. When the “boy” is bid to bathe with the rest of the monks, she runs away, and Alobar follows her. They tell one another their stories while bathing near a river in the shadow of the mountain called Chomolungma.

Kudra says she was born in India to a family of incense makers. When she was eight, she witnessed the first example of a widow throwing herself on a funeral pyre after a dead husband, a practice known as suttee. Coincidentally, the older Alobar was there, too, travelling east in exile. He comforted the girl, noting her similarity to his former wife, Wren. Though he traveled on, he left an impression, and Kudra recognizes him 20 years later. Though the widow appeared to suffer in the suttee, Kudra is informed by her mother that “[t]he life of a widow is worse than fire” (81).

Kudra continues her story. Growing up, she had a strong competence for her father’s line of work and for the art of scent-making in general, but at 15 she was arranged to be married to a rope seller.