Where to stay & what to pack

You don't book a room aboard the Solivagant; a room is offered, and it is always exactly the right size, which is a sentence I've decided not to examine too closely. Mine was round, warm, quiet, and had a window that I'm fairly sure showed me whatever I most needed to see that day. Housekeeping is invisible and immaculate. The bed remembered me.

What to pack: layers (the world runs cool away from the markets, and the High Shelf is properly cold), comfortable shoes (you will walk further than you think and the place is, conservatively, the size of a continent that doesn't end), a paper notebook (electronics behave politely but the notebook never let me down), and an open mind about food. What to leave at home: any plan to see "all of it." You won't. Nobody has. That's not a failure of your itinerary, it's the point.

Best time to visit: they're most lively around what they reckon as the 17th, for reasons I never got to the bottom of. Budget: genuinely nothing — they wouldn't take a penny, and tried to send me home with a moon. Would return: in a heartbeat, the moment they'll have me.