The myth of the sunken city of Atlantis is the focus of an imaginary journey through the mind of the renowned professor Neuffer.
A class reunion takes him back to his childhood home in the Allgäu mountains. Whilst he is there, Neuffer‘s mother dies unexpectedly. Her death and his encounter with his boyhood evoke memories of unfulfilled dreams. Instead of returning to the international research centre CERN, he decides to spend half a year in the place where he spent his childhood and youth.
He is witness to an ominous murder on the local mountain cable car. Whilst inspector Brack, an old school friend of Neuffer‘s, unearths something mysterious, Neuffer finds himself rapt in a vision which occurs as the autumn mists descend upon the Allgäu mountains: The mythical island of Atlantis never sunk at all, on the contrary, the sinking of the world‘s oceans has meant that the island is now where nobody ever imagined it could be - on the "roof of the world" in the Himalayas.
Fascinated by further pieces of evidence which corroborate his theory, he pursues his idea. Neuffer and a young woman about to leave school, Nele, set off to Tibet in search of the land of dreams. They embark upon an adventurous journey which takes them as far as an unsurmountable barrier...

One cannot discover new continents without venturing out of sight of the shore.