Last week, when we finally ascended the ruins of the Leuchtenburg, an erstwhile castle atop a not-so-high mountain in the middle of the Etsch Valley, mid-afternoon, we paused to soak in the view. We were drenched in sweat, not because the path was strenuous, but because the sun shone directly above, and the southern wind, called 'Ora,' had yet to make its way to us from Lake Garda.

The heat cast the surrounding mountains in a hazy glow. We didn't have anything resembling the clear-sighted view we'd had some days before, when we took the cable car up to Aschbach, a mountain village in the Vinschgau Valley.