Nepal, July 28 -- am writing this in Nepal, but I carry the topography of Bangladesh in my bones -- a land of floodplains and rivers, an unrelenting flatness where the horizon is a soft line between water and sky.

Life there is dictated by horizontality, by the flow of currents across vast plains. To come from that world and stand before the vertiginous geometry of the Himalayas is a sensory shock.

The mountains here are not just scenery; they are profound, overwhelming presences.

The news of Andrzej Bargiel's feat -- climbing Mount Everest and skiing down from the summit to Base Camp without supplementary oxygen -- is not a distant headline, but an echo in a sacred valley, a concept almost alien to my native sense of space.

It is an...