I walked to the Western Valley with True Love. I was informed that an elephant would carry the baggage, but then there was no elephant spare. I was assured that there would be porters instead, but on the morning of departure they were all otherwise engaged. So we just went anyway, with rucksacks and no problems – but you never know until you do it.

‘Everybody loves to camp!’ said True Love, who walked in camouflage fatigues and flipflops, carrying his Ml6. He became a teenager again, laughing his way over the mountains. But in the evenings – when I imagined that there might be some fireside conviviality – he retired early to his hammock and read his prayer book. So, we were all exhausted.

The first afternoon we merely crossed the river and walked an hour and a half on an old logging road to a camp at the foot of the first mountain, so as to be ready for an early start on the slope. The loggers had left a vast slab of sawn timber there, six metres long, and on this the travellers assembled. There was Baldwin and his daughter Eve, both of them teachers returning to Betelwood with 20 kg packs of school supplies. There were traders and professional porters with even larger loads of shop stock, torch batteries and pans, Thai sweets and nylon T-shirts, all to be retailed at stiff mark-ups for the porterage (even stiffer during the rains).