Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

We just wanted to say a huge thank you to all of our friends and family for all of the well wishes. Tom and I have been through a terrible ordeal and are lucky to be alive with thanks to the true bravery of our Sherpa and guide. This is a short version of events to highlight what it was like being in a living nightmare. We are lucky to be alive! We are lucky to have each other and to be home safe in the uk. The beautiful people of Nepal are still suffering and will for a long time to come.

We hope that our story will encourage many of the people we know to kindly donate and share our page to help raise money for this good cause. We hope that our contribution will help the mountain people of the Langtang region to rebuild their lives and communities. The charity we have chosen is called Community Action Nepal (CAN). They are a UK based charity whose aim is to help the mountain people of Nepal.

Our story:

We were hiking in the Langtang Valley for around 7 days. We had climbed to the summit of a 5000 meter mountain (Tserko Ri) and had just finished celebrating our climb. 10 minutes after we had started our descent the earthquake struck throwing us violently to the ground. Avalanches were happening all around us and the noise was terrifying. The avalanches seemed to create a backdraft of wind and snow and we were covered within seconds. To our amazement we had not been swept away and after recovering from the shock we had to quickly start descending the mountain to the nearest village.

When we arrived at the village we were confronted with complete devastation. There were so many injured people and the village where we were staying had been destroyed by avalanche! The next 3 days were a huge challenge for us having to sleep outside in freezing conditions dealing with injuries, dead bodies and the uncontrollable grief of everyone we had met along the way. To survive people had to salvage for food, water and blankets from the demolished buildings. We had to descend further down the valley to find an area where helicopter rescue was possible. We had to scramble across huge ice fields the size of football pitches walking past dead bodies and dead animals. We had no radio or phone contact so we're relying on a helicopter to rescue us. People were starting to fall ill due to dehydration and lack of food including myself and had to be put on a drip.

It was truly the most terrifying experience of our lives. Tom and I were two of the lucky ones that got evacuated by helicopter. However hundreds of people were still stranded on the mountain trying to survive with little shelter, food, water and no aid. The helicopter rescue was from a private company with no connection to the government, the private helicopter had decided to help out with the rescue mission as the government were overwhelmed with the number of people who required rescue and were very slow to respond with Aid. The pilot dropped us off in a field near Kathmandu. The villagers took us to a local bus which then took us to Kathmandu hospital. We had a 3 hour bus ride with the seriously sick and injured. On the bus journey to Kathamndu we could see the damage across many of the rural villages. Thousands of people had lost their homes and were  living in temporary tents receiving medical aid. When we returned to Kathmandu we contacted the British embassy and provided a list of all the names of the Nepalese and tourists that were still stranded in the location from which we were airlifted.

The poor people of Nepal are fighting for survival with no aid and desperately need our help. Without the locals and our Sherpa we would have not survived. We are devastated as most of the tourists and locals we had met along the journey have died:( it's so hard to get our heads around that we survived and walked away with just a few bruises. Tom and I are determined to raise some money for the Langtang region and hope to be able to help them rebuild their lives. We very much hope that everyone will be able to provide support too. We want to say a huge thank you to everyone for your lovely messages and support xxxxx