Day 1, March 17

I’m still only in Basel, Switzerland.

I’m lying shirtless on a mattress, slack-jawed from jet lag, in an Airbnb in the country’s north, feeling like Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard at the beginning of “Apocalypse Now.” I’ve got my mission from command back in New York: Travel upriver — the Rhine — and infiltrate Baselworld’s 2016 edition of the Watch and Jewellery Show, the world’s marquee watch fair.

My orders are to rendezvous with dozens of brand representatives in a series of product presentations. I will spend hour after hour donning faux-silk gloves and huddling with watch company publicists in windowless rooms, throwing back free espressos while I inspect hundreds of the splashiest wristwatches of 2016.

It’s a journey into the heart of darkness. I will spend 72 hours, moving stealthily among armies of watch journalists (some 4,000), watch executives (representing hundreds of brands), watch publicists, watch obsessives and watch celebrities. (Yes, they exist.) Each time I look around, the walls move in a little tighter.

9 a.m. I strap on my service-issue Rolex Submariner and head for the Basel city tram.

9:20 a.m. The tram chugs in front of the Messe Basel New Hall. With its facade of glass and shimmering aluminum, it looks like two Frank Gehry museums stacked on top of each other. Strolling through the concourse, I glimpse the booths of countless watch brands — Bulgari, TAG Heuer, Zenith — endlessly repeating, M.C. Escher-style. Imagine the Mall of America, if every store were a watch store.

10 a.m. Stop by Chanel. With a furtive air and old Times Square tout, a young French publicist in black leather pants leads me to a darkened room that calls to mind an upscale peep show. A film rolls, trumpeting the news that this storied Parisian atelier is making a bold move into watches for men with a stunner called the Monsieur de Chanel. This is no fashion house licensed knockoff. It is candy for watch snobs, featuring a jumping hour, retrograde, three-day power reserve and in-house movement. If any of that makes sense, you’re in too deep already.

3 p.m. At Baselworld, the Swiss brands dominate like frat boys at Cocoa Beach during spring break. Few dominate like Tissot, a Swatch Group brand that claims to account for one of every four Swiss watches sold. (Who knew?) Its big news this year is the $1,150 Smart-Touch, a solar model that can last a year on a single charge, even in complete darkness. Al Gore would approve.

The Smart-Touch shows how far we’ve come. At last year’s Baselworld, the month before the debut of the Apple Watch, everyone was buzzing about whether Cupertino’s wrist computer would devastate the industry. By now, countless brands — Casio, Movado, TAG Heuer and Frederique Constant — have decided it’s better to join the smartwatch revolution than to fight it.

4 p.m. The spirit of compromise, however, is distinctly absent at Hublot, a brand about as understated as a Lamborghini Huracán. Take the new Big Bang Unico Sapphire. With its entirely clear case, the $57,900 behemoth might be mistaken for a Casio G-Shock, except that it is tooled from a solid block of sapphire. It’s Fitzgerald’s “Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” but for the wrist.

At Hublot’s moodily chic V.I.P. lounge, with a full bar, black walls and track lighting (it looks like a SoHo nightclub from the Sade years), I catch a news conference starring Lapo Elkann, the comically sauve Fiat heir and Italia Independent eyewear designer, who arrived via private jet and Ferrari to pump his latest collaboration with Hublot, a limited-edition camo Big Bang. Afterward, he settles into a black leather chair to discuss the wobbly watch market of late. “For my company, crisis is an opportunity,” he said. “We never stop innovating. We never stop cross-contaminating.”

Afterward, we pose for a photograph. Wearing a custom tan suit with jet-wing lapels, Mr. Elkann, 38, slips a pair of shades over his sun-tanned face, and purses his lips in a cover-boy pout. No, I haven’t wandered into “A Night at the Roxbury,” as directed by Federico Fellini.

4:35 p.m. Entering the Patek Philippe presentation, I feel as if I’ve been invited to brunch at Claridge’s by Prince William and Princess Kate. Even by lofty Baselworld standards, Patek is an aristocrat. Its big introduction this year is the exquisite 5930, which combines a world timer and a 30-minute chronograph, for the low, low price of $73,700. It’s the first watch I’ll buy when I sign with the Knicks.

5 p.m. Compared with Hublot, my visit to the watch behemoth Omega seems almost terrestrial, although that’s a strained metaphor, given that this company is famous for the Speedmaster Moonwatch Chronograph, which the Apollo 11 astronauts took into space (winding it manually every day).

It’s easy to think of Omega as the Pepsi to Rolex’s Coke. But that’s hardly a bad thing. Pepsi is supposed to be young and cool, right? So, too, is Omega, apparently, which sexied up its Speedmaster this year with a Grey Side of the Moon Meteorite model featuring a dial shaved from the actual Gibeon meteorite. I know, you thought the moon was all gray.

6:25 p.m. The day is hardly done. I board a shuttle to Reithalle Wenkenhof, an 18th-century country estate, to attend a Rolex cocktail party with several style editors wearing Euro-chic suits as tight as sausage casings.

8:40 p.m. Under opulent chandeliers, guests eat sushi and drink Chateau Sociando-Mallet Bordeaux 2011. The party feels like a viscount’s wedding. The room is anything but crowded, but that’s by design. Rolex does not beg for attention. You beg for its attention. I joke to a senior executive that the company’s next marketing slogan should be, “We Dare You Not to Buy One.” I’m not sure she laughed. But I’m pretty sure she got it.

Day 2, March 18

12:45 p.m. At the Rolex presentation, inside a booth that seems like a W hotel with its streamlined earth tones, I settle into a table full of fashion editors. Seemingly, half of them have to place their personal Rolexes on the table to try on the new Rolexes. There is an air of retro chic as a publicist in pearls passes around subtly updated versions of its Cosmograph Daytona, Explorer and Air-King, a model that dates from the 1950s that I assumed had gone the way of tail fins.

It’s obvious from the “oohs” that the new Daytona, with a techy Cerachrom (ceramic) bezel, is going to be a hit. But since Rolex is not going to make a ton of them, and I want to buy one before you can, I’ll say no more.

2:30 p.m. Breitling unveils the Avenger Hurricane, which somehow seems as weightless as a red velvet macaron, despite its Mr. Universe-size 50-mm case, thanks to its proprietary Breitlight (polymer composite) case. The Breitling booth features a giant aquarium filled with 650 jelly blubber jellyfish. They had the same aquarium last year. Where do those jellyfish summer?

6:10 p.m. In terms of Baselworld night life, all roads lead to the Les Trois Rois, the opulent hotel on the banks of the Rhine that functions as the fair’s social hub. I drop into a Movado cocktail party there, hoping to see at least a few Baselworld celebrities. Hey, there’s Alan Alda! False alarm. It’s his doppelgänger, Joe Thompson, the longtime WatchTime editor, drinking a flute of Moët.

A Baselworld veteran of 37 years, Mr. Thompson echoes the observation about this year’s lighter traffic. China is reeling, he said, the plunge in oil prices having torpedoed the Russian and Middle Eastern markets. And the United States of Trump? Well, it’s anyone’s guess. “It’s the perfect storm,” he said.

7:10 p.m. The two of us await the arrival of Kerry Washington, a Movado ambassador, whose flight was delayed four hours. A publicist offers to slip me into the V.I.P. area to meet her. I’m tempted, but I’ve never seen “Scandal.” What would we talk about?

While an appearance by the April cover model for Elle is big new for publicists, watch nerds have a different definition of “celebrity.” Benjamin Clymer, the unassuming 33-year-old founder of the influential watch site Hodinkee, can scarcely move through a room without being buttonholed by supplicants seeking audience. “He’s Anna Wintour,” a fashion journalist said.

10:10 p.m. After a demure Patek Philippe dinner at the hotel’s brasserie, Mr. Clymer and I head over the bar at Les Trois Rois, which is quickly turning into a Studio 54 of watch geekdom.

In one corner of the smoking tent outside the bar, Jacob Arabo (you know him as “Jacob the Jeweler” from songs by Kanye and Jay Z) huddles with a Jacob & Company colleague playing backgammon, clutching a fat cigar and flashing his Astronomia Tourbillon Baguette, a domed terrarium of diamonds that, in customary Jacob the Jeweler understatement, is meant to represent the universe.

11:15 p.m. Still at Les Trois Rois. I run into Eric Singer, the drummer for Kiss, whose watch collection numbers about 200. He discusses the wobbly economy for luxury goods. “When people see the stock market fluctuate, they get alligator arms,” he said. “Their arms get short. They can’t reach their pockets.”

Without the greasepaint, he does not look much like a cat.

12:30 a.m. Hoping to catch a glimpse of misbehaving watch executives, I organize a field trip to Acqua, Basel’s closest equivalent to a Las Vegas nightclub. At my urging, most of the staff of Hodinkee follows. What happens in Basel stays in Basel.

Acqua is mobbed, like Marquee-in-its-prime mobbed. As we suck in our chests and elbow our way toward the dance floor, we lose two Hodinkee staff members. It’s a war of attrition. I’m glad I’m happily married and don’t have to play the “Hey, baby, ever get lucky with a watch journalist?” card.

1:20 a.m. I’m not seeing too many watch executives, unless they are very young ones. The music throbs. It is late. This may go down as one of the most epic nights in Hodinkee staff history. Or maybe one of the worst nights.

Day 3, March 19

10:30 a.m. My final day at the fair. Seiko flashes a special-edition PADI SRPA21 diver watch that looks to be straight from the 1960s, with its famed “turtle” case. “Entourage” fans should be thrilled.

1 p.m. Tudor is nailing it with eye-catching reinterpretations of its Heritage Black Bay dive watch, including a Bronze model that will develop a patina, and the black-on-black Dark, which would make a perfect graduation gift for Darth Vader’s son.

3:35 p.m. I’m starting to see double: I run into Wei Koh, the dandyish young founder of the watch magazine Revolution. He has a vintage Paul Newman Daytona on one wrist and a Bulgari Octo Finissimo on the other. “You can only do this at Baselworld,” he said. “Otherwise you look insane.”

4 p.m. Citizen is a surprise hit of the fair, riffing on its groundbreaking solar watches of the ’70s with the Citizen Eco-Drive One, a solar watch that, at 2.98 mm, feels only slightly thicker than a communion wafer. The Gen Xer in me is tempted to call it “Ginsu-thin.”

6:30 p.m. I board a bus for the Breitling party. It is a guaranteed rager.

6:50 p.m. The bus pulls up to a large warehouse on the Swiss border, and guests ride a freight elevator that opens to a room tricked out like a South Seas paradise. I think those dancers in loincloths are supposed to be medicine men.

In another room, a row of male executives elbows up to a tennis-court-size rink, where leggy female models in shorts and shoulder pads flounce around squealing, pretending to play football. Just as one is tempted to cite Andrea Dworkin, the female models are replaced by hunky male models. A different row of executives moves rinkside, replacing the first. It’s like a second line in hockey.

The next room is made up like a boxing gym, featuring an actual middleweight bout. A guy seated ringside slurps a dollop of caviar off the back of his hand. The excess would make Don King blush.

10:50 p.m. The party’s finale is a rock concert in a vaulted hall with a glass ceiling. A Seal look-alike in leather pants belts out covers of David Bowie and Prince that seem to rattle the ice in the free cocktails.

The world economy is wobbling. Luxury is at a crossroads. But that does not appear to be crimping marketing budgets.