In the high mountains valleys of Nepal, tiny rural communities continue to eke out a living against a landscape at once harsh and magnificent. An cient traditions endure, changing little from generation to generation. For these people the valley in which they live defines the extent of their known world and everything within that world is patterned and coloured by the perasive presence - now angry, now benign, always mysterious - of the local gods. This is the story of Monica Connell's friendships and adventures - boar hunting with the village men in midwinter, celebrating the full moon festival, trekking for miles to a traditional Hindu wedding and of the more prosaic realities of the subsistence farmer's life - washing in incy water, being plagued by flies and working on the land for as long as the light lasts.