We were invited to our guides house today. His name is Kinner Sherpa and he lives in a suburb of Kathmandu with his wife, daughter and two sons, one of which, Pashan also helped on the trek. The first problem was what we should take as a present, google came to the rescue, flowers or cakes. We opted for flowers and the hotel organised us a very large bouquet for about £12, it would have been £50 in the UK.

Kinners apartment was up an unmade road and much of the apartment block also seemed unmade! The five of them seem to share three rooms plus a loo, we were ushered into the living room which also serves as a bedroom.

He first of all surprised us by giving us a very well designed and printed glossy brochure which he and his son in law have been using to promote the business, we only dealt with them via email from a recommendation from Charlotte, Ian's daughter, so had no idea they had bigger aspirations.

After some fairly slow conversation beers were produced. This was a another surprise as Kinner is tea total, then some nice chicken bits were delivered as well as various dips and plates of chips (the Nepalese grow lots of potatoes so chips are a local dish). Beer, chicken, chips, we were all nicely mellow and full ............ then they delivered the main course, a big plate each with more chicken, rice, cauliflower, carrots and salad and of course more beer. OH dear the waistlines were straining a little. We managed to slowly get through the large plates of food, were just settling down to sleep and then........the cake was presented. Pashan had made it, when I can work out how to transfer a picture from my phone to my iPad I will add it to the blog. It was large, had some excellent icing and was incredibly good. They then presented us with prayer shawls and we left them to return to the hotel, somewhat bloated.

We did manage to get into town for a farewell dinner, just to be different I had chicken! It was washed down with a very nice draft Nepalese beer from the Sherpa Brewery, an interesting day to end and enjoyable but demanding holiday.