My summer of love: ‘I made my move on a coach trip to Kathmandu’

The eight-hour journey provided plenty of time to snuggle up on the back seats - and it turned out this wasn't just a holiday romance

A meet-cute on the Annapurna trail might sound like the premise for a romcom, but, at 19, I was thin-skinned, surly and hadn't developed the knack of talking to girls my age. Besides, I wasn't there for a holiday romance; I was in Nepal with my best friend, Sam, and his mother, in whose home I was living at the time.

It says a lot about my state of mind back then that I deemed a bumper quiz book essential for a walking holiday in Nepal. After two solid performances, my Cambridge college was through to the quarter-finals of University Challenge, and bringing the book was a sign that I was finally taking it seriously.