Its chortling music had gradually been replaced by a bewilderingly complex chorus of birdsong, the intricate, unfamiliar melodies dancing on the fresh mountain air. A flock of gaudy parakeets chattered from a lofty stand of bamboo.Apart from the occasional distant shout of a ploughman cursing his recalcitrant oxen, there was no other sound, save the virtually imperceptible hum of the spring, going about its business. Trees, upon which dangled the tiny, starry, white flowers of wild jasmine, hung over the track, filling the still air with an unmistakable and heavily stupefying perfume. Scratching their jagged white outline against the sky, the sheer and inhospitable faces of the Annapurna range of mountains seemed both alarmingly close and, when you lowered the field-glasses, reassuringly distant and inaccessible to mere mortals.Coming up past the shoulder of a hill, we found ourselves at the gate of the Shree Laxmi Primary School.

The pupils who had been larking about in the dusty playground a moment ago began clustering eagerly against the wall, inspecting us with curiosity We, or at least I, felt like Gulliver. We were too tall, northern and winter-white for this fragile, delicate landscape And we were, uncomfortably, too rich. We had spent more on our sturdy hiking-boots than these children’s parents could earn in months.The school had a box in the corner of the playground, and a visitors’ book. You write your name and the amount you want to give and you tuck the relevant notes into the piggy-bank.

It seemed a sensible, unembarrassing solution to one of Nepal’s most perplexing challenges. In one sense, the idea of helping people who seem to have more than their fair share of happiness seems presumptuous. In another, the contrast between our profligacy and their frugality was too stark to be ignored.We had met, the day before, three young men carrying rolls of corrugated iron three times their height up the mountain on their backs. Attached to broad bands around their foreheads, they were too heavy for any of us even to lift: they were going up to the village of Ghandruk at 7,500ft, to become the roof of a new house. The boys were paid the equivalent of £3 a day for this Herculean task. We were tempted to buy them lunch, or at least a drink, but were warned that the price of this refreshment might be docked from their pay.Similarly disturbing was the sight of our own porters carrying our baggage for us. It’s certain that we’d have got nowhere carrying it for ourselves – and indeed, the men were very glad of the work – yet we knew that in Britain, their day’s wages would have bought scarcely half an hour’s labour.

However you rationalised it, however often you told yourself that money wasn’t the only criterion, it didn’t seem right.What did seem right was to visit another school and distribute our pens, via the headmaster; and to go to a health centre and give them vitamins. The sweets I gave to our guide, to do with as he thought best.We also tried to do our best to ensure that we were not depriving the mountain kingdom of essential resources. The excellent Annapurna Conservation Area Project offers frequent reminders along the trail as to how trekkers should behave. We obeyed them to the letter: we bought trekking permits, we stayed in lodges, where fires were fuelled not by scarce firewood but by “logs” made of corn husks; we left no litter to deface the landscape; we happily and gratefully ate the local food.I wished that I’d brought photos of home to show to some of the people with whom we chatted, who were so interested in the world we came from, but we did find other serendipitous ways of making friends One was simply having fun. The chap who had organised our trek had been a major in the Gurkhas: he brought balloons and frisbees, which never failed to delight the children we met. And my husband had noticed a set of Pass the Pigs in his drawer when he fished out our passports and brought it along.