Last night, in the middle of the night, I woke up in the tent , headache gone, and needing to pee. Disengaging from my sleeping bag, I emerged into fresh cool moonlight and walked through sparse trees to the edge of the plateau where we had camped. Standing there, the lights of the village spread out in the valley below me, stars shining clear and bright above me, the misery of the previous day drained out of me. Despite the relatively extreme cold (3-4 degrees celsius, perhaps) it was only reluctantly that I returned to our tent. Some hours later, at around 4:00 a.m., the sounds of our camp starting to stir woke us. We emerged from the tent into a more complete darkness, the moon having set. After a brief pause to collect ourselves, the
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