Friends and family suggested we were overreacting. Dragging two young children halfway around the world, to live in uncertain (but certainly rudimentary) conditions, because of a vague notion that we all might be better off for it? Why not something slightly more normal? A cruise? A few weeks at a Mexican all-inclusive? If it was adventure we sought, what about a month in Costa Rica, where we could recharge in comfort and safety. Fair enough; I saw their point.

But our journey was never meant to be an escape. Nor for that matter was it a search for enlightenment. Our plans were simply driven by instinct, by self-preservation. It felt as if we had slipped into the ocean's depths, and our only choice was to swim for all we were worth toward a distant, obscure light—something we hoped was the surface.


It was past midnight when Christine finally clicked off the bulb in our Manali cottage, and we crawled together beneath the thin sheets of a hard bed. I held her for a time, before humidity and heat drove us apart. In the stillness that followed, wind rattled panes. A gecko darted across cinder blocks. When sleep came it was fitful and plagued by the recurring sensation that I was falling. At some point Bodi screamed in the darkness and Christine leapt up to comfort him.

Two duffel bags sat beside the cottage door. Inside we'd stuffed a few warm clothes, a tent and sleeping bags, headlamps, toiletries, a first aid kit, two small stuff sacks crammed with Lego, two child carrier backpacks, a bag of school supplies, a handful of books, one small camera and our journals.

Everything else we left behind.

Excerpted from Blue Sky Kingdom by Bruce Kirkby. Copyright © 2020 by Bruce Kirkby. Excerpted by permission of Pegasus Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.