“Our guide watched the weather for three days and moved our Kala Patthar morning forward by twenty-four hours. We got the clear window and the group behind us did not. That is the whole difference between a trek that works and one that does not.”

“I am sixty-one and had never walked above four thousand metres. The acclimatisation days were not negotiable and nobody let me skip one, which I resented at the time and am grateful for now.”

“Booking from Singapore I expected to be handed off to a call centre. Instead the same person who answered my first email met us at the airport and walked the whole circuit with us.”

“The teahouses were simple and exactly as described — nobody oversold them. Our porter knew every family we stayed with by name, and we ate better for it.”

“My daughter turned fourteen on the trail and the crew produced a cake at four thousand metres. I still have no idea how. She has not stopped talking about Nepal since.”

“One of our group came down with altitude sickness at Dingboche. The response was immediate, unfussy and correct — descend, no argument, assistant guide went with him. That is what you are actually paying for.”