The road east leaves the valley in a series of arguments with the hillside, and by the time it wins you are already above the smoke.
There is a particular hour on a ridge — earlier than sunrise, later than you want to be awake — when the cloud has settled into every valley below and the hills come out of it like a fleet at anchor. The guidebooks describe this as a view. It is not a view. A view is something you look at. This is something you stand inside, and the correct response to it is not photography but silence, which lasts about ninety seconds before somebody makes tea.
We walked the ridge for four hours with the cloud sitting patiently below us the entire time, and the whole way I kept catching myself checking that it was still there, the way you check a pocket for keys.
The descent was unremarkable and the tea shop had no walls, only a roof and a view of the drop, and the woman running it had strong opinions about which of the hills was which.