Casting off from the Higher Town quayside in St Martin's in an orange inflatable boat, I didn't know quite what to expect.
Tagong, whose altitude of about 12,000 feet makes it one of the highest towns in the world, offers an unfettered window onto the Tibetan people and culture.
Located in the southern French Alps, it is one of Europe's highest towns, and has an excellent skiing pedigree, having opened France's first ski school in 1902.
With many suburban schools already overcrowded and the cost of educating children so high, towns said they can't look the other way when a nonresident is attending their schools, although officials said they understand the motivation.
More than 2,500 business executives and bankers will converge on the highest town in Europe for the annual World Economic Forum.
As the millennium dawned, the children braced themselves against the 3,000m chill of Yemen's highest town.
Start with a walk up into topsy-turvy Dalt Vila (literally "high town") – the Unesco world heritage site is a maze of cobbles and whitewashed walls.
The town is divided by the river into Low Town (left bank) and High Town (right bank), the two being joined by flights of steps, including the 200 Stoneway Steps, and by the Castle Hill Railway, the steepest in England.
The sale would still make it the highest town house sale in the anemic first half of 2009, but not out of line with recent sales of much smaller town houses in that neighborhood.
Over the years, he has built 140 structures for the garden's collection, ranging from an eight-inch-high town house to a 14-foot-tall reproduction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
