I should have trusted my nose. I’ve always had a more sensitive sense of smell than most people. I could always perceive that foul odor on the horizon, long before others noticed that anything was amiss.

As I opened the door of the four-room suite, my nose was issuing mild warnings. But I was ready for a change, so I ignored the message.

I had already spent my first night at the Ivy Bank lodge coughing up a storm. In the beginning, I tried to deny that anything was wrong. I told the room, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

But eventually, I had to face the facts. My allergies were on a roll. And something was triggering them. As I started looking around, I discovered mildew spots on the other end of my bed sheets. Then, as I looked at the thin foam mattress below, I found even more. The mattress itself had become a foam hotel for traveling spores. And the other bed’s mattress was even worse. Strange, hard, crunchy things hid beneath its cloth cover.

I’d been paying 600 rupees a night to stay at the Ivy Bank lodge. On the one hand, that’s somewhere around only $17 a night. On the other hand, it is way more expensive than the other off-season rooms further down the road.

But “further down the road” means a lot when it is winter in the Himalayan foothills. And the less time I have to spend walking in the cold, the better.

True, the Ivy Bank owners swapped out the moldy mattresses as soon as I complained. And true, they did give me the choice of switching rooms. But as I checked out option number two, my nose was telling me that something was amiss.

Too bad I didn’t listen, because two nights later, I was coughing again. And when I looked straight up, I discovered why. In the war between white paint and grey mildew, the tide was turning in the wrong direction.

So now, finally, I’ve moved to room number three. Which is actually Room #2. And my coughing has declined, through not completely disappeared. Maybe its because there’s a little mildew in a corner of this room as well.

Or maybe that perpetual itch in my throat is due to the burning charcoal that my Hindi teachers have started using to heat our classrooms. In a world without central heating, these little metal buckets of embers and flame are a standby for many homes.

So now, my nose is getting mad at me once again. And wait, my Lonely Planet India travel guide is saying something too. What’s that? Indoor charcoal heaters? Bad idea? Carbon monoxide poisoning? What??