Nepal; Kunde village with its hospital, 1986

Nepal; the Sherpa village of Kunde (altitude 3600 metres) where the New-Zealand based Himalayan Trust, established by Sir Edmund Hillary, built a hospital in 1966. In this photograph, the hospital (a long, single-storey building with a veranda running its length and a silver-grey corrugated metal roof) is set back from the houses in the village. Towering behind is the sacred Sherpa mountain of Khumbila (5761 metres). In the mid-1980s, the hospital was run by two resident expatriate doctors, posted for a period of two years, and assisted by Sherpa paramedical staff.