Zaya Niel, age 6, spent her Easter holidays trekking to the Everest Base Camp. Over twelve days she covered more than sixty kilometres to the 5360m high situated base camp of the world's highest mountain.

Quite the intrepid explorer already, isn’t she? And it makes you wonder: where does she get it from?

Well, it turns out she comes from a family of adventurers. Her father Paul successfully climbed to the top of Everest in 2013 and has been telling Zaya stories about it her whole life - and so she was very excited to follow in her father's footsteps.

Paul is originally from Austria and Zaya’s mother Ester is from Holland. The couple moved to Portugal 9 months ago. However, Zaya is very well travelled. So far, she has visited 45 countries and counting (18 of which were before her first birthday).

This latest trip was her greatest adventure yet. Paul told me that they didn’t rush as he has learned from his own past escapades: that it's the journey, not the destination that counts.

Easter turned out to be a good time to go, as Paul told me that the Easter bunny was a little ahead of them on the trail and had left hidden eggs for Zaya and the local sherpa kids to find (at around 4000m). This made the climb more exciting and helped this young explorer hop happily up the mountain. Zaya even received a blessing ceremony from a local Lama (a Buddhist priest).

Back home again, her class at school was doing a project about explorers and Zaya was able to bring in photos and to tell the rest of her class all about her own expedition.

She is keen to hike the hills and cliffs around Sintra and its coastline and is already dreaming about her next adventure. Next time by bicycle.