The school children who leave home for over a decade

Available for over a year

Can you imagine being sent away to school for a decade at the age of four and not seeing your family? In the villages of the High Himalayas in Nepal there are no schools. Many families choose to make the sacrifice of sending their young children to Kathmandu for an education. But the journey down the mountain is so difficult and dangerous that the children don't return to their families for more than a decade. A new documentary, Children of the Snow Land, follows three 16-year-olds as they are given the opportunity to make the long and arduous trek back to the families they barely remember. One of the documentary's filmmakers, Zara Balfour, was on Woman's Hour on Thursday. She explained how they came across this extraordinary story. Children of the Snow Land is in selected UK cinemas and Curzon home demand from 14 March.