Read part one here. Day 2: Tumling The first thing I did when the alarm went off was to part the curtain to take a peek outside. And a large “nothing to see here” sign met me. I couldn’t tell whether it was foggy or just dark, for the human eyes, so effective at discrimination…

“There! Is that it?” I asked, craning over Sourabha’s shoulder, hoping I had just seen Mount Everest. A nebulous snowy spike rose far over the aerial horizon, piercing the endless expanse of cloud: like an iceberg over an Arctic mirage 12 kilometres above the sea.  “Are you sure that’s even a mountain and not just…