My own private Idaho

I HAVE visited many hermitages in my time, but only once have I encountered a hermit inside one. He lived on a cold Romanian hillside in Transylvania, which, on the moonlit night in late December when I set out to meet him, was deep in snow. I was in the company of a band of orphaned gypsies, together with an Indologist with a brilliant smile, and we were all feeling thrilled for different reasons—although that is another story.

All I knew was that the hermit lived in a ‘small house’—which could cover any number of hermetic habitations. Might he be locked inside a cell, dwell in a cave warmed by wolves or bears, or crouch within a flimsy tent