Encounter - Sir Edmund Hillary

I think this is one of the things that has given me satisfaction. That perhaps, we have made changes that may be good, and may be bad —  but we have tried to give the children the opportunity to meet the changes and the challenges.

– Sir Edmund Hillary on building schools in rural Nepal in part one

The world knows Sir Edmund Hillary as the man who climbed Mount Everest, but that was 22 years ago before these Sherpa school children were born. They know him as the man who gave them their school, built their hospital, the man who protested with them when foreigners wanted to turn their village into an airstrip.

– Narrator on Sir Edmund Hillary’s impact in Nepal at the start of part one

I've always had a little bit of a sense of guilt about the Lukla airfield, in the sense that we brought so many people into the area and caused so many changes so quickly.

– Sir Edmund Hillary on the potential harm of constructing airports in rural Nepal in part one

Tourists are not an unmixed blessing. They leave rubbish behind them and the sparse tree cover is being stripped for firewood. They have bought inflation so that now rice costs four times what it did a year ago.

– Narrator on the impacts of tourism on Nepal in part one