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As a rule I avoid group tours because I’m stubbornly independent and prone to wandering off. In search of coffee, a snack, a photo, or just a quiet moment. So it was that walking up Edinburgh’s Royal Mile early on a Wednesday morning to meet my Scottish Highlands tour, with a persistent drizzle wetting the cobblestone streets, I was a little hesitant. Also a little hungover because I’d accidentally timed my trip for Edinburgh Fringe and was making the most of it. I booked Haggis Adventures’ Skye High tour on a personal recommendation (“it’s probably not going to be a bus full of old people”) and because their three-day jaunt through the Highlands, Loch Ness, Isle of Skye, and back via the Cairngorms was substantially cheaper than going it alone. First impressions said the group was around my age, and we came from all over. So I climbed aboard the bus second to last and sat near the back to let the others talk while I tried to nap as we left Edinburgh Castle behind and crossed the Forth Road bridge. I’ll skip ahead and spoil the ending: three days later I was heartbroken to say goodbye to a dozen friends who had been strangers on that drizzly morning. I was also definitely more hungover than when we started. The Scottish Highlands are magic and history inextricably interwoven. Mountains appear like a vision, fading away in fog only to reappear higher and crossed with clear and cold streams. Every mountain seems to have a creation story more pithy than the last, but even my cynical vision was being obscured by the mist as we went deeper into the Highlands. In three days I learned more folk tales than I can remember, but the details don’t matter now. What sticks is the feeling of awe only the Highlands, Cairngorms, Loch Ness, and copious amount of uisge-beatha na h-Alba can provide. The rise and fall of the land, the twisting valleys and dramatic mountains disappearing into low clouds, the rugged bucolic green-ness, is something only a fairy tale imagination can account for. Isle of Skye can only be described by the stories of the giants and faeries who shaped the small island. It’s not hyperbole to say photos, like words, cannot hope to capture the magic of Skye. And the Highlands so perfectly define the experiences that brought 11 strangers and a suffering driver together as friends. It’s no wonder the Scottish Highlands inspired so many of the great stories and songs, from Macbeth to Bond to Frightened Rabbit. Tales of cunning giants, fairy kings, mysterious lake monsters, old crones turned into rock and sisters turned into mountains make sense among the wondrous scenes of primeval beauty. Even Eilean Donan castle seems a natural extension of the land. The Celts evidently realised they could never hope to conquer nature, so they wove the landscape into their identity instead. Or maybe it was inspiration borrowed from the Vikings who made Scotland their home and gave my ancestors a new name. Either way the folk stories, full of moral and mischief, are strong in modern Scotland – in spirit if not in detail. I boarded the bus excited only to see some sights and journey over the sea to Skye. The rain seemed to only let up when our bus stopped, giving us time to discover places like Bride’s Veil Falls, Kilt Rock and Glen Coe on foot. I saw all those places and more. I saw I should be more open to experiences I would normally categorically avoid. I saw how a dozen people, equally independent and none of us admitting we weren’t ready to go back to reality alone (because the Highlands can’t be counted as part of the mortal world), can scatter around the world but stay in touch for half a year. I saw Nessie in the window of a tourist ferry. I think I saw a giant somewhere in the shroud of mist, but I’ll have to go back and check.