Close Encounters Of Various Kinds

I’M in the foothills of the Himalayas, surrounded by three sacred mountains, the moonlight is picking out a small cluster of houses and Jelac is about to walk to school.

- Lucy Baring

Actually, it’s early evening in the Itchen valley, but I’m transported 5,000 miles away by a soundscape on my iPhone conceived by Jane, who has organised this fundraiser for the impressive NGO Stay at School.

We walk along the chalky riverbank, crossing small empty lanes, skirting the edge of the vineyard and fields of poppies on the easiest of paths for an hour and a half—the same amount of time it takes Jelac to walk to school each morning and home each evening.

Or he used to, until Stay at School built a boarding house so that he never has to decide education isn’t worth the dark, wet mountain trek on narrow slippery paths through forests whose spirits used to terrify him.

We pause for Nepalese tea and wind up with Nepalese beer: a surreal evening and as close to the Himalayas as I’m ever likely to get.

In 2013, a young Frenchman knocked on our door and asked if he could camp in our field. He said he was on a walking holiday. Our neighbour, Robert, kept an eye on him and gave him breakfast the following day before dropping him in town with a better rucksack and a map of Winchester, from where the man was trying to get to Ireland (he told Robert) or Canada (he told me).