Good morning, Big Suruk.

When you go to sleep at 8pm, you find yourself awake in your tent at 4 in the morning, shivering in the cold and listening to the sounds around you.

Some are identifiable, some are not. The echo of some foreign language in the canyon below. The wind rushing over the canvas. The barking of wild dogs. The growling of potentially predatory species.

Before we left, I was joking with Jennifer that we'd be eaten by tigers. This morning as I listen to and catastrophise the sounds around me, I'm not sure who the joke is on.

Stepping back.

We're camped out on a plateau at a place that translates to "Big Suruk". It's an extremely small collection of simple dwellings perched overlooking the third highest mountain in the world. There's no electricity and no running water. A few hundred people live in the vicinity. They have no access to health care whatsoever.

We hiked over and set up a makeshift medical clinic yesterday here. It was promoted in the preceding weeks with the help of the General who's farmhouse is serving as our base camp here in the mountains. The four doctors on our team saw over 80 patients here yesterday, some of whom may never have seen a doctor before.

The patients started arriving just as we did. Their issues ranged from simple aches and pains to considerably more severe conditions.

Some patients were easily treatable, like the child who appeared with head-to-toe scabies sores. Or the multitude of people who needed simple painkillers to deal with the physical strains of mountain life.

Others had to be given the advice, which they may never take, that they should follow up by going to the primary medical center at Kalimpong. One gentleman who arrived at the clinic showed all the symptoms of late stage lung cancer. A mother with a brain damaged child why he looked so different. A woman showing the symptoms of kidney failure had no idea she was even sick.

Some of this was truly heartbreaking. A small child showed up asking us to help her little sister who was born without an eye.

There's supposed to be a doctor serving this community, but he doesn't even bother to show up. He hasn't been seen in months.

We've stocked up a simple pharmacy full of useful medications and we're aided by local translators. They mentioned how grateful the whole community is.

In a few hours, we're hiking down to a village called "Little Suruk". If THIS is big Suruk, I cannot imagine what little will be.

The light of my iPhone is the only illumination on the mountain right now. I should get some sleep, tomorrow should be equally intense.