New Delhi, June 27 -- The memories of my recent road trip have a faintly hallucinatory quality. I know everything I saw was real yet parts of it still feel improbable. Utah operates at a scale and in colours that seem borrowed from another planet, and returning to ordinary life afterwards requires a small but noticeable recalibration. I try describing it to people who haven't been, but the words feel inadequate even as I form them.

Over 11 days of driving a 1,200-mile loop around the southern part of Utah-through canyon country, past ancient rock formations and prehistoric petroglyphs, along dirt roads that vanish into a silence so complete it feels curated-five experiences lodged themselves in my mind.

Utah's dark sky reserves are lege...