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It's nearly noon, but the sun has just risen above the Himalayan peaks that fringe Langtang Valley. Its rays at last begin to thaw my frozen hands, yet the extra warmth does little to lift my spirits as I trudge across the grey scar of rocks marking the spot where Langtang village once stood. On April 25, 2015, during the Nepal Earthquake, hundreds of people were buried by these same rocks. I've spent the past few days in the partly-rebuilt village, talking to survivors; and now, feeling the full weight of the tragedy, I slowly make my way back down the valley. It's at this moment, crossing the landslide zone, that I meet Mingma walking the same way. She is a sixteen-year-old Sherpa girl, dressed in pink pyjama bottoms and a pink puffer jacket, with a pink hair clip that has a blue pen wedged horizontally through it. She strikes up conversation by asking, in Nepali, if I'm trekking alone. "Yes-eklai," I reply. "No friends." "No friends!" She makes a sobbing gesture with her fists. "Then I will be your friend." I thank her. "You are very pink," I add. "And you are very white," she shoots back, though my clothes are in fact blue. Mingma is accompanying her older brother to the valley mouth. He lives in Langtang, and is leading a train of pack-mules to the nearest town to pick up supplies for the village. She came here to visit him, but will be flying home tomorrow. "I live in Everest region," she tells me. "It's much better than Langtang. The Sherpa girls there are strong and brave"-she mimes carrying a huge weight on her back-"not like city girls: always clothes and make-up, always weak, always crying." I laugh, partly because Mingma herself looks closer to twelve than sixteen. Her wry caricature of an old woman offering tea to trekkers is also funny: "Namaste! You like tea? Stop five minute? Take look, something?" As we walk, I struggle to keep up with her unrelenting pace. She skips lightly from root to rock as we bound down the trail, and seems to glide across fast-flowing rivers. The only thing that slows her down is the dung-scented dust raised by the mules ahead of us, which sometimes prompts her to swivel round with a look of comical disgust. When the time comes to say goodbye, I'm hit by an unexpected pang. In a few short hours I've grown rather fond of this girl-she has thoroughly cheered me up-and I'm sad that I'll never see her again, or hear more of her jokes. To yearn after the fleeting is, perhaps, the fate of the traveller.