You can’t believe how relieved I am when I see a little line of blue tents appear on the horizon. I think that must say something about my state of mind as I would not normally be looking forward to spending the night in a tent, I’m pretty sure of that. How my expectations have changed. Am I the same woman who went to pot because she’d no electricity for two days!

Our snugly proportioned accommodation for the night—and for the next four weeks—has been pitched by the banks of the river. From this distance they look like colourful butterflies settled in a meadow. As we approach, trudging down the hill, knees complaining, I can see the porters scuttling about, a hive of activity. There’s a welcoming fire going and steam rising from a battalion of big metal pans. My stomach groans in anticipation.

Dean catches up with me again. ‘We’ll be there soon,’ he says. ‘Feeling okay?’

I nod. Apart from being pink-faced and having a pleasant overexertion throb in all body parts, I’m fine.

‘You’ve done really well.’

I think that’s a bit of an optimistic assessment—my own view would be that I’ve survived my first day. My little friend Sajani left us at the outskirts of her village, but another gaggle of smiling children await our arrival at the camp. They’re armed with a washing-up bowl full of cold water from the river in which chilled bottles of Coca-Cola float and, even more incongruously, San Miguel beer brewed in Nepal rather than Benidorm. They surround us like a swarm of friendly bees in moments and when Sanjeev Sherpa tells us that they’ve walked five miles from the nearest village to bring us these welcome refreshments, only the hardest of hearts could resist parting with a few pence for a bottle of Coke. Even though it’s two years past its sell-by date and the caps are rusted shut.

I buy a Coke for Dean too and pass it to him. We both sit on a welcoming boulder and he takes the tops off, wiping away the slightly rusty ring of dust from the surface on his tee-shirt before we gulp them gratefully. ‘Most of the villages don’t have clean drinking water,’ he says sadly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Though you’re never far away from a multinational soft drink.’ He studies the label on his bottle as if mystified by the ways of the world.

I lean back, enjoying the weakening, last rays of sun on my face. ‘Have you been here long?’

Dean stares out across the Seti Khola—where blue-throated bee-eaters and white-capped river chats scoot across the surface in the gathering twilight. ‘Ten years,’ he says, looking fairly amazed about that too. ‘I came out here after college as a volunteer on a conservation project and never went back.’