Planning travelling with young children was filled with anxiety. The reality however, was very different. The morning we leave for Nepal I wake from a sequence of anxious dreams: running from a tsunami with Lilah, whacking crocodiles over the head with a strip of 2 by 4. We have a day at Dubai airport, hot, jet-lagged and all struggling to sleep on strips of plastic chairs. The duty free is extraordinary: if one wanted, one could buy a car, a gold ingot and a chocolate camel.

We step out of Kathmandu airport to find the taxi-rank. Pow! Bewilderment begins, seen afresh as if through our childrens’ eyes. Nepal has become India in the 20 years since I was here: it is so busy! The traffic is insane. But there is still space for the cows and the limb-deficient dogs, finger-deficient builders (leprosy?), beautiful flowers, fruit sellers, litter-pickers, car-horn-tooters and mad motorcyclists. All of life is here. The buses are packed, huge advertising hoardings line the streets, buildings are being constructed everywhere, many half-finished, the roofs sprouting steel cables to support the next floor that will begin being built when the money comes in.

Eventually we find our friends Richard and Rhian’s place, a sanctuary where we base ourselves for a month of adventures. They have a beautiful terracotta coloured house complete with wooden shutters, tiled roof and a well in the garden. The building is surrounded by fruiting trees and flowers, a vegetable garden, and a front yard boasting two dogs with five legs in total between them. There’s Rajesh and Ramita the house-keepers (who are aunt and uncle to the living Kumari goddess), Krishna the gardener, and Ram and Prakesh, the two guards. A high wall around the garden keeps the city at bay.

Walking to Patan Durbar: such a feast for the senses! We amble down twisting alleys, past gardens full of bougainvillea, jasmine, canna lilies, hibiscus, lantana and banana trees. At every corner is a tiny shop selling sweets, bangles, batteries and paan. The alleys become streets, we cross a main thoroughfare by a stupa on a grassy mound with prayer flags and prayer wheels, gorgeous cheeky children and an immovable cow sleeping in the middle of the road. Is Durbar Square the most beautiful square in the world? It must be up there. We eat at Café du Patan, five floors up, ten flights of stairs, the last story big enough for our table alone. We scoff dahl and rice, washed down with lassis and milk shakes and watch the sunset, count 54 kites being flown by small boys from the roof tops around us and catch sight – briefly – of a snowy peak through the monsoon clouds.

We trek up to Kanjing Gompa at the top of the Langtang valley, a day’s bus ride away from Kathmandu. Lilah is extraordinary and sets the pace from day one. Kai has been chanting Om Mani Padme Hum the whole time since hearing a CD of popular Tibetan chants. Richard gave him a big stick so he has been bashing plants along the way and pretending to shoot monkeys. We see the 7200m peak of Langtang Lirung peek-a-boo through the clouds, hang out with yak cheese makers high up amongst the glaciers and I explore the impressive boulders around Kanjing Gompa being very careful not to fall and sprain an ankle.

There is a group of German hydrologists up here who are mapping the glaciers and comparing their findings with a Japanese study done 17 years ago. Initial results suggest a two metre drop in the surface of the ice all over indicating a huge reduction in the volume as a result climate change. This has potentially disastrous consequences for the local population: the glacial runoff is life-sustaining during the dry season. Also, as the ice retreats, glacial lakes are left hanging above the valleys and the settlements, held back by increasingly unstable glacial moraines. There are around 500 such lakes in Nepal.

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Five years later a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hits Nepal and a devastating landslide obliterates Langtang village. Around 250 people were killed. What became of the lovely people we met? Down the valley there was a delightful woman who ran the Black Cat Guest House, as we named it.

Such a warm welcome! She gave us smiles and laughter and encouragement to throw stones at the monkeys who were trying to steal her vegetables, shared her home and her food, and was so kind and loving towards Kai and Lilah. We all felt safe and warm there. The Himalayas are young mountains, unstable and ever-changing. It’s all so temporary and impermanent, all of this. We must do what we can in the time we have.