HE SPENT his summer holiday eating piranhas, living on a boat and pulling out hundreds of teeth.

Dr Peter Saund swapped his comfortable Eastleigh practice for the Peruvian rainforest and Amazon basin to provide dental care.

And previously he trekked to the slums of Kibera in Kenya, and pulled more than 500 teeth from patients.

Now Hampshire’s own daredevil dentist is back on his travels and this time he is heading to Nepal.

The 52-year-old from Winchester hopes to make a difference to people affected by last year’s devastating magnitude eight earthquake which killed nearly 10,000 people.

As part of one of the first dental missions in the country since the disaster he hopes to provide as much dental care and pain relief as possible.

He also hopes to help educate families on how to prevent tooth decay in children.

The dad-of-two who qualified as a dentist in 1988 will leave his practices, Parchment Street Dental Care in Winchester and Smile Studios dentist in Bournemouth Road, Chandlers Ford, to head to the capital, Kathmandu, on April 23 as part of a team from Landford dental charity Dentaid.

He will then carry boxes of dental equipment including a special folding dental chair across the Himalayan foothills of Guram Besi and Dhamikau where they will try to set up a system of sustainable care for residents who have been forced to live in temporary housing since the earthquake.

Dr Saund, who is funding the £2,500 trip himself, was inspired to help charity since his wife Veena died of cancer aged 43 in 2007.

And he is determined to help those living in the most disadvantaged communities in the world.

He said: “Because it’s the first mission it’s going to be a fact-finding mission to see how we can help. There could be more to follow.

“Our primary aim is to provide basic dental care to the population because there’s a lot of damage to the infrastructure in Nepal and as a result a lot of the systems that have been put in place are defunct so we want to see how we can help get them back on their feet and provide dental care.

“My aim in life is to do one mission a year.

"It really gives me a feeling of satisfaction afterwards.

“I like to go somewhere slightly off the beaten track and it’s a chance for me to explore part of the world which you won’t really get to explore through a travel agent.

“It’s my way of giving back to society in what I have been trained to do.

“In the western world here we do treat patients and patients don’t realise how lucky we are that all the treatments are available.”