I wonder if you could help me find a book.    It’s one I read as a teenager, but it could have been older than that (I’m 40). It’s a book about a girl and it’s set somewhere like the Himalayas maybe? I know she ends up in India at some point, I’m pretty sure it mentioned the Ganges. She basically goes on some journey. She has a guide, not sure if it’s a familiar or a spirit guide, but it’s a snow leopard that she can talk to. She does battle with a figure of Kali, and Kali bites her hand off. I remember the description of Kali’s foul, rotten breath. Then she sort of manifests a spirit hand. I remember that she treats someone for a fever, and imagines pulling the fever out through the top of the person’s head and rolling it like a ball of yarn. She doesn’t know what to do with it, if she throws it away it might find another person. So she crushes it in her spirit hand.   It’s a lot of specific information but I’ve never been able to find it.