‘I spin the wheels. Alive or dead? Alive or dead?’

As Nigel Richardson embarks on a trek in Nepal he receives a phone call – his mother has been rushed to hospital. Should he fly home, or stay and do the trip?

In late 2008 I was scheduled to go to Nepal to write a story for these pages. As the date of departure drew near I did not want to go, which was nothing unusual. Before every long trip I feel like John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley: “As the day approached, my warm bed and comfortable house grew increasingly desirable and my dear wife incalculably precious. To give these up for … the terrors of the uncomfortable and unknown seemed crazy.”

Now another factor tethered me to home soil. My elderly mother was suffering from fragile physical and mental health and being cared for in a nursing home 160 miles from where I lived. Recently there had been a couple of emergencies when, unable to breathe properly, she had been admitted to hospital during the night. She had rallied, but could easily have died.

What if there was a similar emergency while I was away? Like me, she hated hospitals. I couldn’t bear the idea of her dying alone in one. At the same time, I knew that this was no basis on which to run my working life. So I decided to go to Nepal, but I didn’t tell her I was going.

My mood was troubled as I set off and on arriving in Kathmandu it darkened further, for the Nepalese capital was an inferno of smog and snarl-up. Seeking respite, I went to the Hindu pilgrimage site of Pashupatinath, on the eastern outskirts of the city, where people cremate family members on the funerary ghats by the side of the Bagmati river. I had seen this in Varanasi in India and found it calming and consolatory, that death could be so welcomed.

Sure enough, at Pashupatinath the traffic and pollution fell away. Strolling among its complex of steps and temples I came across the funeral of a woman and sat down to watch the ritual unfold. Wrapped in a white shroud, the corpse was laid on a bed of logs on one of the cremation platforms on the far riverbank. The funeral workers built up the pyre until it resembled a ramshackle stork’s nest. Then everyone stood back except for the eldest son, who lit the pyre.

Watching it smoulder and burn my thoughts drifted with the smoke, forward to my own mother’s funeral. It surely wasn’t far off, and when it happened I knew exactly where and how it would be – the red-brick crematorium, the few words I would say before the coffin completed its brief journey beyond the velvet curtains.

The next morning I flew from Kathmandu to Pokhara where, as arranged, I met the guide who would be accompanying me on the trek I was starting the following day. We were going to follow the western semicircle of the Annapurna Circuit, but not on the traditional route.

Over the previous couple of years, amid controversy, a road had been built on the course of the trekking route, bringing rough-terrain vehicles, fumes and dust to a string of villages previously only accessible on foot. My idea was to forge a new route away from the road, drawing on the guide’s knowledge of shepherds’ paths.

We discussed the project briefly, but I couldn’t concentrate, preoccupied with thoughts of my mother. For the same reason the guide – let’s call him Ram – made scant impression on me. Later, as I lay napping in my room, the bedside telephone rang. It was my partner: “Listen. Your mum was taken into hospital last night…”

We agonised over what I should do before agreeing there was nothing I could do. If my mother was going to die, it would be in the next few hours. Even if I flew home right now – and there was no guarantee I would find a flight – she would either die while I was in the air, or pull through. Either way I would have achieved nothing. We agreed I should stay and do the trek.

The next morning Ram and I flew up to the mountain landing strip at Jomsom, high in the Annapurna Circuit. This flight, in a small turboprop, is said to be one of the most dramatic in the world. Mountain peaks as white as an A-lister’s bridgework loomed just beyond a wingtip. Bursts of brilliant sunlight swirled through the cabin. But I was unmoved.

I had consoled myself with the expectation that for the next six days, until we returned to Pokhara, there would be no means of contacting home. This was in the days of patchy mobile with Europeans and North Americans. I had to fight the urge to collar someone and, like the Ancient Mariner, splurge out my story, begging them to accompany me to the nearest telephone.

At the end of the final day a car picked up courier and package at the base of the valley and the package was delivered back to its hotel in Pokhara. As soon as the package was alone in its hotel room it rummaged in the bottom of its rucksack and produced the half-bottle of scotch that had been waiting there for just such a moment. The package gulped some scotch and dialled its own telephone number in England.

My partner answered straightaway. My mother was alive! She had been discharged from hospital the next day and was back in the nursing home. That evening I celebrated with steak and chips and too many beers. Two days later I was alighting from a taxi and crunching up the drive of my mother’s nursing home. There she was, sitting in a bay window. I didn’t tell her about Nepal and she had no recollection of her scare.

Two weeks after that, when I was back in my flat at the other end of the country, my mother was again admitted to hospital in the middle of the night. She died early the following morning, before I could get there, but she didn’t die alone. Apparently a student nurse called Rachel was holding her hand.

I had to fight the urge to collar someone and, like the Ancient Mariner, splurge out my story