I met Kalyan Gurung in 2008 during a trek in Nepal with my wife and a friend. He had been assigned to be our guide; his young cousin Raju Gurung was our porter, carrying three overloaded duffels in a wicker basket suspended from his forehead with a tump line. We started our trek in Solu, in the hilly farmlands five days’ walk below Lukla, where most Everest treks begin. Half a day to the east was Meidel, Kalyan’s childhood village.

Kalyan had grown up tending goats in a steep hillside pasture. Before he was a teen he loaded a basket and began portering, the only way for boys and young men to earn hard cash in the area. But he also stayed in school. Kalyan was smart and driven—he saw portering as a path to a trade.

When we returned to Nepal five years later, in autumn of 2013, we hired Kalyan again to lead a 13-day trek around Manaslu. This time our group was larger, and Kalyan managed a support team of porters, cooks, and assistant guides numbering over 25. He was a smooth and capable leader, tending solicitously to our group of Western trekkers (some of whom had never done a trip like this) and then slipping away to nurse the blistered feet of the young boys he had hired to carry our loads, encourage those who were struggling, and discipline the laggards. He was 29 and on his way to earning his second master’s degree. To broaden his client base, he had learned four languages (English, Chinese, Korean, and Hindi, in addition to the various Nepali dialects he spoke). Soon after our trip, he would launch his own guiding business. He was finding a place in the upper ranks of the country’s small middle class. When the first earthquake struck on April 25, Kalyan was at home in Kathmandu. Although he is unmarried and childless, he is the de facto leader of a large family of siblings, their spouses, and children. It took us more than a day to learn that he and his family were OK. (At least 8,000 people were killed by the quake.) On May 3, we finally heard some details: “My family is still in the tent outside of home, where my small room has been damaged. So I am searching for another apartment, but most of the houses are broken here. My home in the village is also damaged. I sent some money to repair it to my sister. With me are my five brothers, their wives, and four children. We have rice and dal. We cook outside and eat. There’s no variety, but it’s OK.”