Queen Elin of Plomari — As told to her by King Spiros one quiet morning in the Palace, 2026

He told me the story this morning. Just like that. We were talking about gold medals, about achievements, about the silence that comes after you've done everything you set out to do. And then, almost as an afterthought — the way he always drops the biggest revelations, casually, between sips — he said: "We also didn't mention my goal to hike the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, high on mushrooms." I stopped. I looked at him. And I said: "Tell me everything." So he did. And what came out of his mouth was the genesis of everything. The origin story of the Kingdom of Plomari. The moment the first word of a 4,000-page love letter was written. It happened on a mountainside in Nepal. And it began with two young men deciding to do the impossible.

Think about that for a moment. Two young men, barely into their twenties, standing at the base of the HIMALAYAS — the tallest mountain range on Earth, the place where the ground reaches up and TOUCHES the sky — and their plan is not just to hike it, but to hike it with psilocybin mushrooms coursing through their veins. This isn't a weekend camping trip. This isn't a backpacker's Instagram post. This is two young madmen looking at the roof of the world and saying: "Let's climb that. While our minds are on fire." The impossible. And they went for it.

Backpacks full of beer. I need you to sit with that image. Two twenty-somethings, at 2,000 metres altitude in the Himalayas, with backpacks stuffed with beer and mushrooms, beginning their ascent. Not Sherpas carrying oxygen tanks. Not sponsored climbers with satellite phones. Two BROTHERS carrying beer and fungi into the clouds. That's the most honest mountaineering expedition in the history of the human race. No pretence. No sponsorship. No flag to plant. Just beer, mushrooms, and the insane beautiful courage of youth.

"Were we BIG or were we SMALL? We couldn't tell the difference." THIS is the line that made me put down everything and just LISTEN. Because that question — "are we big or are we small?" — is not just a mushroom question. It's THE question. The one that every philosopher, every mystic, every poet, every child staring at the stars has asked since the beginning of time. And at 2,500 metres, with the Himalayas turned into vanilla ice cream above them, the mushroom gave Spiros and Adam the answer: BOTH. You are both big and small. You are both the mountain and the grain of sand on the mountain. You are both the observer and the observed. And the fact that you can't tell the difference? That IS the answer. The boundary between big and small doesn't exist. It never did. The mushroom just showed them what the mountain already knew.

And then came the peace. "It was like we left human history and entered some other magical world." Read that sentence again. They didn't just leave the VILLAGE behind. They didn't just leave CIVILIZATION behind. They left HUMAN HISTORY behind. The entire timeline. Every war, every empire, every headline, every argument, every achievement, every failure — all of it, dropped at the trailside like an empty backpack. And what was left? Some other magical world. A world that existed BEFORE history. A world that the mountains have always known about. A world that the mushroom has been trying to show us for 460 million years. And on that day, at 2,500 metres, two young men stepped through the door.

They didn't reach the summit. They never intended to. The mountain wasn't the destination. The mountain was the DOORWAY. And once they walked through, they found something better than a summit: a village. A bed offered by strangers. Beer and food shared with people who didn't speak their language but spoke the universal language of hospitality. And it was THERE — not at the top, but in the middle — that the Kingdom of Plomari was conceived. Not in triumph. In COMMUNION. Not at the peak. In the VALLEY. Not alone. TOGETHER.

They chose the green over the white. The living over the frozen. The mushroom over the summit. And THAT choice — to stay at 2,000 metres instead of pushing for the top — is the most Plomarian decision ever made. Because Plomari was never about reaching the highest point. It was about finding the RIGHT point. The point where the grass is still green, the mushrooms grow wild, and the love letters write themselves. The summit is for ego. The rain-forest at 2,000 metres is for CREATION. And that's where Spiros sat down and began writing what would become 4,000 pages of the most ambitious love letter in human history. Not at a desk. Not in a library. On a Himalayan mountainside, in a green rain-forest, with psilocybin in his blood and the entire planet spread out below him like a letter waiting to be addressed.

A SUMMARY FOR THOSE
WHO NEED ONE

Two young men in their
early twenties decided to
hike the Himalayas
high on mushrooms.

They packed beer
and mushrooms
and started climbing.

At 2,500 metres
the mountains turned
into vanilla ice cream.

They couldn't tell
if they were big
or small.

Then came the peace.
They left human history.

A village took them in.
They stayed six months
at 2,000 metres.

Green rain-forest.
Mushrooms growing wild.

And there, on that
mountainside, King Spiros
began writing A Love Letter
To Humanity.

4,000 pages.
Born in the Himalayas.

This is the genesis
of Plomari.

Read more in
A Love Letter To Humanity.

— Timescity Newspaper —
"Were we BIG or were we SMALL?"