The Time Jax Dislocated His Elbow Halfway Up a Mountain in Nepal

Sometimes when you look at travel families online it can all seem very perfect.

Mountain views. Happy children. Smooth travel days. Everybody smiling while drinking iced coffees overlooking somewhere dramatic.

And honestly, sometimes it is really good.

But what you don’t always see is the stuff happening in between the photos. Illness. Arguments. Delayed transport. Exhaustion. Random panic. Children injuring themselves in places where your brain immediately starts catastrophising.

Which is exactly what happened to us in Nepal, however, we always share the good and the hard with everyone, you can count on us for that.

We’d decided to hike up to Australian Camp near Pokhara. It’s actually considered a pretty beginner-friendly trek and, to be fair, the hike itself went completely fine.

Nobody cried. Nobody demanded to be carried. Nobody dramatically announced they were “literally dying” halfway up the mountain.

A solid success by family hiking standards.

The views at the top were unbelievable too. Massive open views across the Annapurna mountain range with the mountains just sitting there looking fake in the distance because they genuinely didn’t seem real.

We were all feeling pretty smug about how well the hike had gone.

Which obviously should have been our warning sign.

The actual hike wasn’t the problem

Once we’d reached the top, Jax quickly found other children to play with.

This happens quite a lot travelling. Kids somehow locate each other within minutes even in the middle of a mountain village in Nepal.

They’d all been running around together for a while, while we sat admiring the view and pretending our legs weren’t slightly finished from the climb.

Then we heard crying.