The story begins in the Indus Valley of 2012 at a desert campsite with Julian writing in his journal that it's been 6 months since he "arrived here in India". Although the country was named after the river, since the Partition of India in 1947 nearly all of the Indus flows through Pakistan; the only exceptions being the upper reaches of the river in India (and China) which are very high up in the Himalayas.