Damai was only ten years old when his mother died. His father was overwhelmed caring for his two younger siblings, so Damai left his childhood home—a mud hut with a straw roof in the hills of Nepal. He set off alone in search of work, shelter, and food. Alone. Hungry. Without guidance or comfort, he became a dishwasher in a tea house for five cents a month, sleeping where strangers let him, surviving moment to moment. At age ten!

This episode traces the extraordinary life of a boy who became an adult far too soon. From being sent to school in Nepal by kindhearted European tourists who noticed this young boy living alone on the streets to working as a Sherpa to Everest Base Camp in his twenties, to receiving a fiancé visa from an American woman he spent two weeks with on the mountain. From one impossible moment to the next. One chance encounter to the next shepherded Damai to building a new life in the United States. Damai’s story is one of unimaginable hardship, surprising kindness from strangers, and unbelievable grit.

Now a father to a college graduate, he reflects on a life without role models, love, or safety—and the steady peace he continues to seek with that absence.