Unfortunately, the morning after the ceremony things were not quite so merry anymore - I was down with a violent case of food poisoning.

We were supposed to be trekking to a remote yak herders’ camp to spend the night in an area where there had apparently been recent yeti sightings. It was our last chance to get a story before we had to leave the country. And now I wasn’t going to be able to make it. Instead, I got evacuated out of the mountains to the nearest small town while Richard headed off alone.

It was a bitter pill to swallow but, at the same time, I realised it was also somewhat of a relief, a release from my constant chasing and increasing desperation to get a good story.

Maybe this was nature’s way of telling me to back off from the yeti - both for the sake of the preservation of the local environment and for my own mental health.

But Buddhists are fond of saying that, paradoxically, you only really advance when you stop striving to, when you let go of desire and just allow things to progress of their own accord instead of trying to “push the river”.

And, in a crazy twist of fate, that’s exactly what happened when I was reunited with Richard…