
A giant panda nurses a tiny week old baby.
Her tender cleaning wards off infection.
She won't leave this cave for three weeks,
not while her cub is so utterly helpless.
Progress is slow
for milk produced on a diet of bamboo
is wretchedly poor.
Four weeks old
and the cub is still blind.
Its eyes do not fully open until three months after birth,
but the chances of the cub reaching adulthood are slim.
The struggle of a giant panda mother to raise her cub
is a touching symbol of the precariousness of life in the mountains.
On the highest summits of our planet
nothing can live permanently.
The highest peak of all,
Mount Everest, five and a half miles above sea level and still rising - the roof of our world.