I'm assuming that anyone venturing here, in the dry and dangerous inland Crunch, has some experience flying on Capsica on rented wings. Your shoulders have stopped hurting, you can spot likely updrafts, you're used to low gravity and high air pressure, and of course, as always, extreme heat, making the lowlands fatal.

Okay, I've stated the obvious. You've been warned.

Except for its east edge, Darim Plateau's in the hot, dry, inland Crunch, and near the equator. Terrans can only tour it (somewhat) safely in winter. So we'll start in late fall in southeast Lrota-Keh Plateau on the Crunch's equatorial coast, and follow the Lau Mountains inland into Darim and circle its rim widdershins sorry, counter-clockwise around Darim's great wedge, offering escapes to Tralken and Lindara Highlands at the corners.

Seasons change fast on Capsica--barely nine weeks each--so if we hurry it should be early spring and still quite cool as we swing back to the equator. Sweaty, but not fatal.

Anyway, just wanted to warn you I may move you along pretty fast. It's not that Darim isn't scenic--it is.

But it's just bad form for a guide to let tourists die.

So you're riding the updrafts along the Lau Front, where the winds off the Nevo Sea hit that mountain wall and rise five miles. You're near the equator on a sweltering world, yet the highest peaks above you gleam with streaks of snow; several top 8.3 km (27,000'). And the Laus aren't unique on Capsica; vigorous tectonics plus low gravity makes it easier to build Himalayan ranges. Though they're big angular castles; they lack that jagged Ice Age look of Earth's highest ranges; snow falls, but melts in summer; only when it heaps up into over years into glaciers can ice carve peaks into horns and cirques. The crags are carved by thunderstorms, not ice.

Southeast. The first day's a straight, easy ride--provided you stay two or three miles up, waist-high on these giants. Cool streams, some snowmelt, cascade down every few miles. Green meadows, scattered, open woods. Lower, the dull reds of heat-tolerant rhodofers start to spangle the vegetation, and at the mountains' feet, Rira Savanna, a lavender grassy plain freckled with ruddy leopard-spots--small groves of red trees. Dusty-rose snakes wind away toward the sea--creeks lined in low red trees. Like Earth seen through infrared eyes...

Day two: the lowland trees thin and vanish; the lavender grasses fade to pale pink: dry. Late in the day, sparse trees return, on hills up to a km or two high (a mile or so)--high enough to snag some extra rain. But the pattern's still clear. You're creeping away from the equatorial rains into a drier zone.

Day three: dun rocky patches break through the savanna. Above you, the mountains march on, but the summits are only (only!) 6-7 km up (20-23,000'), and snowfree. Just not high enough for more than flurries, even now in early winter.

Day four: pale green meadows and sparse woods above you, desert below. But the great wall of Lau starts to break up--deep hanging valleys, twisting gorges. By afternoon it's not so clear where the real divide is. The Lau Range was the rim of Darim Plateau, Tibetan in height and extent; but this southern stretch, Lau Spur, leaves the plateau. Over those peaks is just... more desert, the Srnif Basin. You're in the real Crunch now--as in Central Asia, fertile land's just niches and oases between great stretches of jumbled golden sterility.

On day five, you reach the southwest corner of Darim; its most confusing region.

Capsicans call a lot of highlands "plateaus" when they're by no means flat. Capsicans just mean it's continuously too high and cold for them; by convention, any big stretch of land with green vegetation. I've followed their usage no matter how rugged that upland is.

But Talfa really is a plateau. Capsica teems with monster mesas, but this is the biggest of all. Flat-topped and forested (open woods, it's true; this is a dry corner of the world), cliffwalled, desert canyons at its feet. Talfa could be in southern Utah. Except it couldn't fit in--being nearly as big as Utah.

Off to your right, over a desert valley 90-100 km wide (60 mi) rise the Dwelan Mts. Geologically part of the Lau Range, but freestanding, the Dwelans are some 450 km long (280 mi) and nearly 8 km high (26,000')--rugged, twisting ridges studded with steep volcanic cones. Heights above 4 km are green-wooded--dense on the maritime side, sparse on the inland (SE) side, where the Dwelans help to rainshadow the Alkat Desert. Though surrounded by harsh country, the Dwelans are a relatively fertile sky-island, and part of a flyway over the Nevo Sea, called The Narrows.

Beyond the Dwelan Range is Cape Hel--some savanna, but mostly desert. Still, it's part of a flyway across the Nevo Sea called the Narrows, leading to the pleasanter region of Njip... but leave it to Capsicans only. Water's not the problem; Hel's central hills are savanna, and waterholes and wells can be found; but those hills are under a kilometer high (3000'); fatally hot for Terrans year-round. From the Dwelan Range across the Narrows to the Gell Mts in Njip, It's over 320 very hot km (200+ mi) . Don't.

The Alkat Basin, probably a former sea as big as the Nevo or even the Eltek (big as our Black Sea). Hard to say. Now, squeezed by relentless crustal spread from the Arch, it's just a salt-poisoned sink, cut off from all rain. Crushed to dusty death. In deep time, it's the fate of most plates in the Crunch.

Down Talfa Mesa to the end. North and east of you, those desert canyons and mesas are just the fringe of Srnif Maze, an eroded & crumpled basin stretching hundreds of km. Darim Plateau's other edges are drastic walls, but here it's not so clear. I suspect Srnif is another crumpled platelet, but unlike Alkat, not a sea basin but a complex tangle of high- and lowlands. Entirely cut off from outside by mountain walls 4-6 km high (13-20,000'), it gets little rain, sp life is sparse even on the heights. The floor is desert. Two small salt lakes are all that's left of its ancestral sea(s). Not as dead as Alkat, but dangerous for Terrans. Locals cross it, taking advantage of its updrafts, but I plan to skirt it.

South along Laress Spur to the jumping-off point to Tralken Plateau in the very heart of the Crunch. It's a hazardous flight for Terrrans--200 km (125 mi) over the nastiest desert on Capsica, intimidating even to locals. But plenty of Capsicans take it; the shortest crossing there is.

You have a second option here, but it's a dead end--a sky-island to the east called Twaps Mesa. Really a mountain range half the size and height of the Dwelans; not as fertile, for the Eltek Basin is very salty and generates little rain, while the Alkat is worse. But this uptilted wedge of crust is over 3 km up, with peaks past 4.3 (10-14,000'). High enough to get significant rain and escape most of the dust. It's a small example of something common in the Eltek Basin; exceptional only because it's easily reached. Most others are completely freestanding. Deserts as moats, like Oz.

Twaps Mesa's not so easy to leave, though. North over a dusty lowland gap to Itlas Ridge, a craggy wall, sparse-wooded, with desert on both sides--the Keib down toward the scalding Eltek Sea (scalding both thermally and chemically; brinier than our Dead Sea), the Itlas Basin to the northwest. Itlas Ridge rises consistently into the green zone, but that green's pretty patchy. Bare rock. Strong winds, an easy ride, if hot and dry. Water's scarce. You find a tiny spring in one hanging valley, take ten minutes just to fill your bota, and are grateful for that much. Ride on! It gets better.

Slowly Itlas Ridge grows higher, the trees denser. Actual creeks--if small ones. The upland broadens from a knife-edge to sprawling alpine meadows--you've reached Laress Upland, east of Srnif Maze, a lobe of Darim Plateau again. Safer from here on! No hopping over deserts or clinging to crags; and water will always be findable. High, wide catchbasins, even in semi-arid country, collect enough.

So we're back on the rim of Darim Plateau, heading northeast through the Laress Hills. Off to the right, that shadow floating over the pink and tan dust of Keib Desert isn't an illusion; the Thoot Mountains, another sky-island on the shore of the Eltek Sea. Right on the coast, its climate's more maritime--the seaward side's got real streams, forests, . Heavily settled middle belt, though the heights, up to 5.5 km (18,000'), are too cold for Capsicans--now, in winter, it's barely 15° up there (59°F). But the peaks wring extra rain from the stingy winds off the Eltek Sea, feeding irrigated orchards in the foothills.

Thoot's fertile for the inland Crunch, and perfectly reachable--crossing the Keib Desert's risky but not as awful as the Alkat. If you had to land, the Shongu River, that red strip halfway to the mountains, is warm but not scalding hot--it started as snowmelt on Darim Plateau. Furnace-like air, but you could drink, soak yourself, and perhaps cool by evaporation and successfully cross the second half. Still, Thoot's a dead end--lowlands of the Eltek Basin all around--and rather like Twaps Mesa, if a bit bigger. Let's not go and say we did.

A day northeast through high country. Really high; golden dry steppes 4.5 km up, and some of the Laress Hills get up to 6 (15-20,000').

Huge Shongu Canyon, draining most of the Darim Plateau--not that it's a rainy place. But like the Colorado, the Shongu's silty, and that grit's helped it gnaw through thousands of meters of rock.

The Seiba Hills, much like the Laress, but even more sustained; no major canyons cut into the patch of rolling highland. Three days northeast without a red tree; winters here get below 35°C, and even summers here rarely top 55 (86-131°F). Truly Tibetan, though not quite so dry; Capsica's denser air transports moisture higher. You appreciate the bracing cold--it's 30-35 (86-95°F), and at night drops to 25! (77°F) No wonder rhodofers don't flourish up here. Or Capsicans. Though it looks and feels livable to a Terran--Kansas, basically--you're utterly alone up here.

A second reason the locals don't like it: thin air. Perfectly breathable, but at 5 km up flying is hard; just not much air to grab. Barely 1.5 Earth atmospheres up here! Without Capsica's low gravity you'd be grounded. Anyway, you need those mild upland temperatures; you're not passively riding winds, but working all day.

That other river, the Gombo, drains a third of Darim Plateau, an area big as Montana (and kind of similar if you subtract the snow).

Waterfalls along the north side of Gombo Canyon, at one point 4.6 km deep (15,000'), a record on a world of deep canyons. But it's not long; a chain of cascades drop the river to near sea level in less than 100 miles, and the gorge widens. The silty Gombo transforms into a lazy, green-brown snake winding through a great farm-valley; red irrigated squares and arcs (fertile oxbows). On the southern horizon you can see the Seiba Hills, blocking rain, making irrigation essential here, but also blocking salt and alkali dust from the Eltek Basin. Too hot for you, but the Gombo Valley's an oasis in this mostly barren sea-basin.

Our flyway's clear: east along the plateau rim. Two days later, a tangle of canyons and crags, wetter than anything in weeks. You're nearing the sea at last.

Take it slow over Kfelt Pass, where a fault (between miniplates, I think) has gnawed into both sides of the divide. Rugged and there's a steady headwind down from the heights. You feel sweaty, and it's not just from effort. The air blowing over the pass is charged with moisture from the world-sea. You're leaving the vast internal drainage basin (well, basins) of the Crunch at last, heading back into land with real rain.

Here you have a choice: finish the Darim tour (and eastern Darim is fertile--no more desert, I promise!) or wheel to the south, into Lindara Highland, half coastal and fertile, half inland and... unpleasantly like Darim.

As we glide down from Kfelt Pass, huge falls below in Kfelt Gorge. The Kfelt is a modest river by coastal standards, but after weeks of inland desert, it shocks you.

Up the east coast of Darim. This is the plateau's best face. Plenty of rain off the R'mitsa Gulf. Fertile from shore to summit!

Up the coast. More falls. Clouds, mist, rainbows. After the inland side of Darim, it looks like paradise.

On the second day, you can see R'mitsa Gulf; the dropoff's quite steep here, the coastal plain narrow.

Around day four, the plain suddenly widens; the Nolat River Delta.

Here the flyway veers inland. Up Nolat Gorge. It narrows slowly; for a day you can't even be sure you're skirting a valley: the far rim's lost in clouds.

What you do notice is how the peaks to your left have been rising; the highest are even crowned with streaks of winter snow; the Deggar Range rises to 8.5 km, 28,000'. You're entering a complex collision zone between the forces thrusting up the Deggars, the similar Lau Range (where we started; not too many hundreds of kilometers west, by now) and the Lrota-Keh ranges, topping out at 11 km (36,000'), high enough for glaciers--on the equator. Of Capsica. Go high enough, and even this greenhouse atmosphere thins out enough.

So, huge slopes from ice to rockfells to meadows to green woods to olive to deep red woods and lilac meadows half veiled in lowland clouds. Cascades and falls all over! We're near the equator, and though the sea's not visible from here, its influence is all around.

Two long days up Nolat Gorge, past cascades and falls with a bigger volume than Niagara, and higher too. A bass rumble even miles off, after weeks of silent desert. You dream of earthquakes and dinosaurs.

Here you have choices: west to the start of the tour, and on toward Cape Njip, north into the Himalayan highlands of Lrota-Keh, or northwest to the capes and isles of R'mitsa Gulf.

Full circle! Now you've seen the back of beyond, I recommend heading north into Lrota-Keh; it's just as rugged and scenic but coastal, and that means fertile--clouds, rain, woods, waterfalls, swimming (not IN the waterfalls), fruit, civilization, salad, the sea...

All those little amenities Darim lacked.

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