From a love affair in the Himalayas to a lifetime of family travel

He was her knight in shining hiking gear.

Climbing to the 5416-metre-high Thorung La Pass in the Himalayas, only the bright white dots of her fellow hikers’ head torches visible in the pre-dawn blackness, Anna Kerwin found herself struggling for breath.

On a 21-day group trek along Nepal’s popular Annapurna Circuit, the Ireland-based Pole realised she was again succumbing to altitude sickness, having suffered from it the day before.

“Hundreds of thoughts were flying through my head. I just couldn’t believe I was struggling so bad again,” she wrote in a blog post on the ordeal. “I definitely felt more prepared for this trek than the previous one. I was eating properly, drinking enough water. What else could I do? It was so disappointing. I just kept saying to myself: ‘Come on! Put yourself together woman!’.”

Deciding to push herself to keep up with the group, reasoning that she could rest at the next shelter, her breathing became more laboured still.

“Somehow I managed to get to the High Camp, but thought I was going to suffocate there,” she said. “I just couldn’t catch my breath at all. I was trying to take some deep breaths, but some strange noise was coming out from my lungs, and judging by the faces of the people around me, I definitely didn’t look that great at that moment.”

When her breathing finally returned to normal, Anna discovered the rest of the group had pressed on toward Thorung La without her, but she was determined to try to catch up. One of the two guides who had remained behind with her, a local man named Prem, told her they could give it a go, but that they might need to arrange for a yak to carry her if her breathing difficulties returned.

Making slow progress, each step commanding her full attention, Anna struggled to maintain motivation, saying that each time they crested one hill another appeared on the horizon. Approaching the next shelter, Anna spied a friendly face in the crowd – that of the Kiwi she had bonded with over long trekking days and shared meals during the first days of the trek.

Embarrassment at what she perceived to be her weakness gave way to joy when that Kiwi – a Brisbane-based Kiwi named Grant Kerwin – wrapped his arms around her.

“I think my dear friend knew or saw I was pretty close to the edge at that moment,” she said. “Once again it was just an amazing feeling to know that somebody cares. It’s just incredible that one hug can do so much. I really felt my spirit come back with it, and it gave me an extra motivation to continue on to the pass.”

Ten years on from the trip that changed their lives irrevocably, Grant, now 52, told Stuff he had stayed behind to wait for her, and that they carried on to the Thorung La Pass, where they were greeted by colourful prayer flags and smiling hikers congratulating one another for having reached it, together.

“Our real journey started from there,” he said. “We were inseparable for the rest of the trip.”

With the steepest ascent behind them, Anna, Grant and the rest of the group were finally able to relax and properly enjoy the scenery and cultural diversityon the great Nepalese trek.

“We partied our way through the Himalayas, Grant said. “Evening card games, couple of drinks, good laughs and some old Boney M music in the background – it all made the trip memorable.”

When they completed the circuit, which follows the Marsyangdi Valley to the desert-like upper Kali Gandaki via the snowy mountain pass, Anna and Grant spent a few days exploring Kathmandu together. As their departure dates loomed – she had plans to travel around China for six weeks and he intended to return to Brisbane – they realised they wanted to continue to see one another.

For the next six weeks, they emailed each other every day, agreeing to meet up in Bangkok and travel Southeast Asia together when Anna, now 43, finished up in China.

“I waited for Anna at the airport and once we saw each other again, we knew it was meant to be,” Grant said. “A few evenings later, I even surprised Anna with some Polish language skills. I said ‘kocham cie’ (I love you).”

As luck would have it, both were on something of a hiatus in their careers which enabled them to travel for a decent length of time: Grant was a free man after selling a business, and Anna had received a sizeable payout after being made redundant from her banking job in Dublin.

But despite the favourable circumstances, there were plenty of reasons for the couple to question whether their relationship would last the distance.

As Grant said, travelling together “definitely wasn’t easy at times as there were many obstacles in our way. We derived from totally different cultures, had different first languages and had different personalities with separate lives on two opposite sides of the world. But as we travelled through the beauty and chaos of Southeast Asian countries, we bonded even more through our differences and came to realise that our underlying values were the same.”

Standout moments from their travels through the region included island hopping in Thailand, boating down the Mekong River into Laos, trekking through the rice fields of Sapa in northern Vietnam, biking around the ancient temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and watching the sunsets from the palm-fringed white sand beaches of Sihanoukville.

For Grant, the beauty they found wherever they went was made poignant by the tragedies that had unfolded across the region.

Some of their most memorable experiences included visiting the Cu Chi tunnel complex in Vietnam, where villagers once dug themselves out of the range of American shelling; learning that Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita and that people are still being killed and injured from ordnance left over from the Vietnam War; and visiting the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields in Cambodia.

Anna had never been to Australia before so, when their time in Southeast Asia came to an end, the pair flew to Brisbane, intending to stay for just a few weeks so she could see where Grant had been living. When Grant was surprised by an acquaintance with a job offer, they decided to settle in Australia for the time being, and ended up staying for a couple of years and welcoming their first child there.

When their daughter was seven-months old they set off again – this time to Europe, where they visited family in Ireland and Poland and travelled through central and eastern parts of the continent.

Highlights from their time there were visiting historic castles such as the sprawling gothic Malbork castle complex in Poland, built by Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, and the baroque Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna – both Unesco World Heritage sites.

As in Southeast Asia, testaments to former trauma were everywhere, with Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Warsaw ghetto, and the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, where shell-pocked buildings and compelling museums tell tales of the 1990s siege, proving particularly memorable.

While in Croatia, the couple discovered Anna was pregnant with their second child and so, after returning to Brisbane, they decided to move to Christchurch where Grant had extended family.

These days, the couple combine full-time work – Grant as a car rental branch manager and Anna as an insurance broker – with raising their two children, now aged 6 and almost 8, and exploring New Zealanders’ communal backyard during holidays and at weekends.

“Although we still like to travel as a family, there are other aspects we now need to consider,” Grant said, referencing the children’s safety, education and social development.

Overseas travel is still important to them, however. Anna took the children to Europe to spend time with her family when they were 1 and 3, and they met up with Grant in Sri Lanka on the way back. More recently, they’ve had family holidays in the Gold Coast and Fiji, and they plan to visit Ireland, Italy and a few other European destinations together later this year.

“We want our kids to learn and experience other cultures and places,” Grant said. “We both travelled before we first met and intend on continuing our travels and hopefully one day get back to the Himalayas, where we first met.”