The plain below Chiang Mai is flat and busy. Twenty minutes up the mountain, the road narrows, the temperature drops, and the way people describe distance changes from kilometres to how far you can walk.

You stay in a family home in a village on the slope. The family farms, and the household is built around the agricultural year rather than the calendar.

The most useful thing about a homestay here is not the room. It is that the schedule belongs to someone else. Breakfast happens when breakfast happens. You will not be eating at a set time because nobody is running a kitchen for you.

There is work if you want it, and none if you do not. Harvesting, carrying water, splitting firewood, sitting with a grandmother who has no particular intention of teaching you anything.

Evenings are long and quiet. This is not a programme with an activity schedule after dark. It is the part people remember.