The pilot, who is sitting up front, cranes his head around, grins, and gives you a thumbs-up. "This is the life, eh, Namen Oberhelm?" he bellows over the howling Himalayan wind. "This is what it's all about!"
Ted "Stevo" Stevenson is an ungainly Australian Aboriginal man with rugged features, enormous brown eyes, and a lopsided smile. He seems to be one of the most genuinely optimistic people you have ever met. He has few needs, and he meets them by working as a freelance pilot, taking fares wherever they want to go and spending the money he makes on lodgings, beer, and adventure. When the cash runs out, he takes on another job. It's a wildly itinerant lifestyle, a mode of living that has blown him like an autumn leaf back and forth across the globe. Most recently, it has taken him to the Indian city of Srinigar, where you found him and gave him this job.
He's still talking. He never seems to stop.
"You must really like this fella," he shouts. "Coming all this way just to see him!"