We stop for the night at Top Hill Guest House, Monjo. There, on the hotel yard, I meet our porter, Jamal Singh, a 19 year old Rai (a middle hills tribe) boy with a shy smile. Jamal comes from a village below Lukla, two days’ walk away, but he usually manages in a single long day, he tells me. In the off season, he works in Sherpa households in Lukla. His mother lives alone in the village, working in the fields. They had two cows which they had to sell off, so now they are a little hard up. In his spare time, he takes a battered English text book out of his pocket and brushes up his lessons. Jamal quit school at 12, and doesn’t believe he’ll ever go back.