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We were fortunate enough to have come across a fantastic woman called Elsie James, who has organised our treks for us down to the finest details.

She is Canadian and spends a lot of time in Nepal, organising humanitarian things as far as I can tell. Elsie obviously knows a lot about trekking as well and has been such a valuable source of information on how to plan our treks down to a tailored day-to-day itinerary.

The trekking company she is organising our treks through is Ecological Treks and Tours www.nepaltreks4u.com

We decided on two treks - the Annapurna Circuit, which takes 19 days and over the formidable pass of Thorung La at 5400m (note: more than half way to Everest!!), and the Everest Base Camp trek, which takes about 15 days and which doesn’t actually take us to the foot of Everest per se (you can’t see Everest from Base Camp) but we will get good views of Everest from the summit of Kala Pattar.

They’re both classic Nepal treks, and we will be staying in “tea houses” along the way - they are little guest houses that are tacked on to a family home, and usually consist of a basic room with a cement floor, two plank beds, and two wonderfully thick quilts that make for the best sleep ever! Electricity supply and toilet facilities are fairly basic (sometimes non-existent - once we were sent to bed with a candle and a matchbox for lighting!)