Until last week there was an idyllic little oasis tucked away in the Himalayan mountains in Nepal. It was a village called Langtang and was the second last stop on a trek which inexplicably was not as popular as logic would suggest.

Snow peaked mountains, warm hospitality, over-priced water, fickle electricity supply and broad, beautiful smiles on the faces of the locals.

This place sits in my heart as one of the most important I have ever been too on my own personal journey. It is important to me in ways words could never fully articulate or capture. It was here in Langtang my faith in this world slowly started to be restored after a horrific act of violence I had accidentally walked in on.

But Langtang no longer exists.

After the 7.8 magnitude earthquake which shook Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu on April 25, bringing down ancient buildings and treasured monuments and claimed the lives of at least 7,500 people, a glacial avalanche led to a landslide which quite literally obliterated this little hamlet and those who lived there.

The guest houses are gone. The yaks which grazed lazily in the open fields are gone. The men, women and children who called this place home are gone. The stumpas are gone. The cheese factory is gone. The facade of one lone building stands. There is nothing else left. Nothing. Just silence in what has now been described as the worst hit village in Nepal from this catastrophic natural disaster.

And it breaks my heart.

I was there this time two years ago. I talked with the locals, shared meals and local brew and bad jokes. We played cards and danced as my guide Dipak sang traditional songs.

I slept off altitude sickness and slurped home-made garlic soup. I proudly took photos of my blistered and snow-burnt face. I watched the women tend the fields for 12 hours a day while the men sat around and smoked.

I witnessed my first ever storm in the Himalayas and watched breathlessly as the lightning burst into rainbows of colour as it had nothing but snow to reflect off. I glimpsed a snow leopard skulking through the mountains.

I have never been so entranced. And knowing it is all gone is devastating.

The people of Nepal have a monumental journey ahead of them as they work to rebuild their lives which were already impoverished. But Nepal as a country has a soul no other country I have been to could match.

While Nepal is a country which allows us westerners to remove ourselves from so much of the bullshit which is our gadget-filled, time-poor lives, it is home to 27 million people who will all be touched in some way by this tragedy.

Nepal is a country which has given so much to so many. Now is the time for us to give back. If you cannot afford to give your money, please give your prayers. They will be needed.