After a painful divorce I had come to Nepal on holiday to try and recover, maybe out here in the fresh mountain air, the emptiness I felt inside would start to disappear. On the train to Kathmandu, I had the misfortune to eat a salad which gave me dysentery, I staggered off the train and for three days I lay in a cramped hostel bed unable to keep any food down and when I recovered I set off for the foothills of the Himalayas. It looked as if the world had been tipped on its head. Clouds swirled below me and above stretched a sky so deep it could have been an ocean. The sun beat down on my neck. A familiar feeling of sickness gripped me, my dysentery was back but much worse this time. I looked for a place to get a drink but there was nowhere. Hours passed and my footsteps grew heavier, I began to feel faint then in the very far distance I made out a building, If I could just reach it I could get some water. Summoning every ounce of strength I had left, I made it and collapsed outside. Hearing me fall a man rushed out and crouched beside me " I'm PK" he told me, "You're safe here. I'll look after you". He led me towards a bed and poured cold water into my mouth, but my head was burning and I was slipping in and out of consciousness. PK told me his wife was a nurse and would be home soon.

By the time she arrived a crowd of locals had gathered, worried that a tourist was dying in their village. The villagers looked after me, feeding me tea and biscuits and keeping my temperature stable. Six of them took it in turns to watch over me at night. Three days later, PK said his father, Nogli, was returning to Kathmandu and insisted that I should stay at the family home there until I had fully recovered. At Kathmandu I followed Nogli through a maze of streets until he stopped at a plain door. He knocked, it swung open and I stepped back in surprise. A beautiful woman was smiling at me, in almost fluent English, she introduced herself as Sita, PK's 25 year old sister. She was at university and knew all about me, the Englishman who'd almost died in her native village. After a week I was well enough to go home but on my return to Heanor I couldn't settle. I realised I was missing Sita and a few weeks later I returned to Nepal

In time I proposed to Sita and she accepted and we were married in front of the entire village. Afterwards we returned to Heanor where we settled in.

We later returned to Nepal for a belated honeymoon and took some pens and pencils for the village school. When I visited I could see that it needed a lot more than that. These people had saved me from death and welcomed me into their lives when I married Sita, it was my turn now to help them. I started taking photographs and measurements, next I ordered materials and tools then enlisted the help of my brother-in-law and his friends to carry them up the mountain. The Headmaster asked what was going on and I explained that I was going to build a new school for him. He looked at me then turned away ' I panicked, I was just a stranger who'd been in the village five minutes, now I was trying to change everything, perhaps they didn't want me meddling ' But then the Headmaster turned round, his face was wet "What you are doing will help many children, thank you" he said. Back in Derbyshire I set about organising raffles to raise money. It wasnt' long before I had raised almost 1000.00 and had the school completed. Since then I have started other projects to help the villagers of Nepal and to repay their kindness, the current one is to raise 5000 to build an orphanage.