We were fairly sprinting by now. We took a last lingering look at Everest through a gap in the trees and carried on descending.

We seemed to see so much more on the descent. We fairly nipped across bridges that, ten days before, had terrified us. From one bridge we peered down on this perfect crop of cabbages, destined for a veg fried rice that evening.

This poor porter passed us with a whole tray of mayonnaise on his back as well as full cans of Everest beer. We felt very guilty – he was replenishing the stocks we had drunk the night before. Or were we keeping him in a good job and encouraging a circular economy? Discuss.

To thank Ngima we bought him a T-shift in Namche which we all signed. Actually this was a cunning ploy by all the ladies on the trip who wanted to see him with his shirt off. So, we gave him the T-shirt gift and he duly took off his shirt – as planned. All the ladies swooned and giggled in a girly way. All the men pretended to do other manly things like talk abut football etc. Six-packs are, in my opinion, overrated.

Ngima told us a bit about his life – he had started as a porter in this valley, carrying beer, mayonnaise, wood and (for all we knew) toilets up to the high altitude tea-houses. He had then become a guide and finally an Expedition Leader working for a good company – Exodus. This is a very high-status and relatively well paid job in these parts. He had a wife and children (the ladies all looked disappointed at this news) who he didn’t see for months at a time during the trekking season.

We arrived back at Lukla, by now firm friends with all in the group. The porters told us what a good group we had been, and seemed genuinely impressed that we had all played games together in the evenings and had talked to them during the daytime.

First we went clubbing. Well, we found the Irish Pub and, not only did it have gin and tonic(!), it also had a pool table. So we had a few games. Then we returned to the hotel for our final evening meal together and a party. We even built our own mini-Everest out of empties. By now we thought of it as a good thing – everything we consumed was giving a poor kid a chance in life.

Ngima, of course, was the life and soul of the party. He even did a pretty mean break-dance which I tried to copy and nearly put my back out.

We then had the tricky issue of tipping the leader and other guides. We knew this was coming as it was talked about in the Exodus route notes. But, of course, we were clueless as to how much we should tip. To little would seem wrong as we were all ‘millionaires’ in comparison to the Nepalese. But too much would label us, in our own eyes at least, as decadent and patronising. Fortunately, tipping is so much part of the culture here that Ngima broached the subject and told us exactly how much was normal for each of the team of guides, the yak-man and himself. This was done in a perfectly matter-of-fact way. I do not recall the exact ratios, but I recall Ngima got about £70 (so about £5 per trekker) – for 14 days. This seemed so little that a few of us put in an extra tenner – thereby showing ourselves to be decadent and patronising! You can’t win.

Another tradition was to donate some of your kit to the Nepalese at the end of the trek by tossing it into a big pile on the floor. This was then distributed to the porters who carried everything up and down the valley on their backs. This explained some of the bizarre fashion we had seen them wearing. I remember John – the ‘Everest nut’ – donating a fantastic, barely worn down jacket. His very generous reasoning was that he was unlikely to ever do this again. I thought I had nothing to give, even my walking shoes were years old with holes in them. So I had a chat with Ngima and he said my walking shoes would be prized by one of the young porters on the trail. I was projecting my UK standards onto the Nepalese who had virtually nothing. So I left my shoes behind, and I like to think they are still in use today.

I was nominated to make a small (very small) speech, and I thanked all the porters for getting all of us safely up to Base Camp and down again, and also for giving us the adventure of a lifetime. Especially when it snowed at 17,500ft we thought everything was looking a bit dogdy, but we had built up a great trust in our leaders and they safely guided us down.