In my dream I was a young girl, growing up in a valley that was home to a cluster of warring villages, high in the Himalaya. Overlooking our Valley was an immense, snowy mountain, whose peak was almost always wreathed in clouds. The mountain was called Mahaparbat, Great Mountain, and despite our differences all of us who lived in the Valley revered that mountain: our ancestors had told us that of all the world’s mountains ours was the most alive; that it would protect us, and look after us – but only on condition that we told stories about it, and sang about it, and danced for it – but always from a distance.

For one of the binding laws of the Valley, respected by all our warring villages, was that we were never, on any account, to set foot on the slopes of the Great Mountain.