Jimgrim by Talbot Mundy

Castastrophes come suddenly like tidal waves and leave us wondering what happened and how we survived. Presently we begin to invent an explanation, and before long we have convinced ourselves. That is one reason why all history is such a mess of inconsistencies, and why I hesitate to give my version of what took place that night in Northern Tibet. I don't know all, or nearly all that happened; and things happened so swiftly that it is difficult to distinguish between actual memory, deduction and sheer guesswork.

I went to a window. Baltis volunteered the information that we had left Chak-sam and the Tsang-po River leagues away behind us and beneath us. We were flying low and it was sunset, with a howling wind lashing the anger of Koko Nor. No need to ask what lake that was. There is no other body of water that it possibly could have been. We were flying slightly to the westward of it; I could see the desolate salt marshes and wastes of sterile desert left by the ever-shrinking inland sea. There were clouds of wild-fowl settling for the night. Not a human being. Not a human habitation. Loneliness -- dreariness -- and the depressing twilight grey that only swamp-land knows.