Technology hasn’t got all the answers, and sometimes – just sometimes – what is needed is spirituality, time and some good mountain air.

I love to escape to wild places – forests, mountains rivers or the sea. If that’s not possible, I flee into books; vicarious travel is rejuvenating.

Living in the edge – that’s what I feel like when I don’t know what my bowels are going to do next.

I reckon that blaming people fixes nothing. You’re the only person who is going to sort you out. No-one else really can – or really cares, enough. That’s what Nepalis know – better than anyone. That’s our Western disease. Don’t take responsibility. Take on a lawyer!

A smile costs less than electricity, but gives more light than it!

Huge up-draughts – invisible forces – tossed our little plane like it was an insect.

A small, light object landed on my head. I looked around. Another small something hit me. I looked up. After a third thing hit me, I untangled a couple of deer droppings from my hair. It was spotted deer poop. I must be one of the only kids on the planet to recognise the sultana-like pellets of hares and deer and the boulders left by elephant and rhino. I heard a cackle behind me and turned to receive a handful of deer pellets full in the face.

Wherever there was a scrap of soil amongst the ravaged crags, emaciated trees struggled to cling on: a poignant metaphor for the way so many Nepalis eke out an existence, defiantly surviving on less than nothing.

The few certainties in our existences are pain, death and bereavement.

Blood-coloured bottlebrush trees and scarlet hibiscus looked too bright for this devastated world.