Before breakfast

The alarm at Laban Rata goes off at two. Nobody needs it. You have been half awake since midnight, listening to boots on the stairs and someone in the next room losing an argument with a zip.

Breakfast, if you can call it that, is toast and very sweet tea. Then head torches on, and a line of small lights starts moving up the granite.

The guides have done this hundreds of times. Ours wore flip-flops for the first hour, then changed into proper shoes, which we took as a sign. Above the tree line the ropes begin, and the trick is to watch the boots in front of you rather than the drop beside you.

Low's Peak, at 4,095 metres, is not much bigger than a dining table. You arrive in the dark, find a rock out of the wind and wait. Around six the cloud below goes pink, then gold, and the whole of Sabah switches on.

“Around six the cloud below goes pink, then gold, and the whole of Sabah switches on.”

Then you turn round and walk all the way back down. Your knees will have opinions about this for several days.