Bharat Garung, my young porter, carried my green bag around the Annapurna Himalaya Circuit last October. I stayed in simple lodges en route with him and my guide, Kaji Sherpa. They were both excellent; reliable, knowledgeable, kind and fun. We walked for just under a fortnight through summer, autumn, winter, autumn and back to summer.

Along the trail we passed women and men carving and chipping by hand at the rock to make a path or a road. Porters were resting; their loads were always heavy and sometimes cumbersome, like the chickens stacked in their wire cages, or the porter who carried two sofas for miles up to one of the many villages perched on high that are scattered about the mountains. Other trekkers too; four Spanish doctors, Canadian and German lawyers and architects, Swizz Bankers, French Mountaineers, Chinese architects, Koreans, Italians, Israelis and Australians aged twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and sixty or more. Male and female, sole trekkers, some in pairs, others in small groups.

We trekked up and down hillsides, around and up and down mountains. It feels high. The Nepali children ran past us laughing, happy with their simple home-made stick and leaf windmills.  Then around the next treacherous landslide we found a woman in pain, her cheek swollen from a large abscess in her mouth. I found the strongest painkillers I had in my first aid kit. Someone was going to have to pull out that tooth and there were no dentists here. No doctors for a few days trek. Except at Manang. There where the two volunteer doctors with Himalayan Rescue Association were on duty for a second annual three month seasonal stint. They were there to advise and prevent trekkers and mountaineers falling victim to acute mountain sickness (AMS) and there to help the local communities, frequently saving their lives. Of course the locals didn’t have BMC insurance to get them off and down the mountains. At £6K a buzz there was no Fishtail Air or Air Zermatt expertise helicopter rescue for them if things turned for the worse. No doctor to treat them unless they were close to Manang, in the trekking seasons.

We rested and became acclimatised. The bells of the mule trains jingled past us. We climbed higher. Up and across the Thorong La Pass. At 5,416 m (17,769 ft), higher than Mont Blanc. Three hours before sunrise it is cold too and at dawn very, very beautiful. I found my oxygen-thin blood made walking difficult, they didn’t. As Kaji told me “ I was born at 10,000 ft.” He added “ My father died when I was young, so my mother brought me and my brothers up on her own.” Thanks to Kaji and Bharat who know and respect the mountains I came back alive and well.

I trekked through the hardship, through the beauty and back down to Pokhara and the orphanage I had been working in before I started the trek. Afterwards to Pharping and one of the many Buddhist monasteries there in ‘Little Tibet’ to teach the young novice monks English (the newest recruits handed over by desperate mothers were only three or four years old). Mountain life, indeed life for most people in rural Nepal is tough. Life expectancy is low and Infant mortality high. There are too many orphans and children with only one poor surviving parent. Figures are in the region of 160,000.

Then I came home. Back to the creature comforts we take for granted here in Europe. But I haven’t returned the same. I haven’t really been able to walk away.

So I have founded a Not-for-Profit organization that aims to build self-funding Children’s Houses for orphans and semi-orphans. They will be courtyard communities designed to be run by local Nepali for orphaned Nepali children.

Perhaps you would like to visit Nepal one day; if so perhaps you'd like to find out more about this project. Please visit www.childrenshouses.org

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