Where I come from
Above the clouds and what it costs to love something there.
"People talk about sunsets on the beach. They should really watch one in the clouds, between mountains and rivers."
I grew up above the clouds. Literally. Nainital sits at 6,840 feet (2084 meters), and some mornings you step outside to find the valley below entirely swallowed in mist and you are standing on top of it. The Himalayas aren't scenery to me, they're the air, the ground, the thing that quietly reminds you that you are small, and that this is fine.
They're also honest with you in a way that nowhere else is. Leopards don't read lane markings on mountain roads. Tigers have walked the edge of my neighbourhood. Wildlife is as much a part of daily life as the market or the school - beautiful, close, occasionally terrifying. We lost a pet dog to the wild once. The Himalayas give you so much, and they take things too.
I think this is where I learned to be careful about love. To take it seriously. To not have a dog unless I can truly be there for them. To not leave a place, or a person, or a thing I care about, halfway. The mountains teach you that beauty and danger live in the same place, and that you don't get to have one without making peace with the other.