As a child growing up in Dehradun, Rohit Chaudhary’s gaze often lingered upwards, on the villages perched on the shoulders of the Uttarakhand mountains. School treks that took him there stayed etched in his memory. While he found life in the hills fascinating, he had no inkling that he would one day find himself back there. 

In 2022, life handed Rohit an opportunity that took him right into the heart of Uttarkashi’s Dunda village, which sits at an elevation of 1,158 metres above sea level. That was the year Rohit (56) joined Ganga Valley Educational Trust (GVET) as the Managing Trustee, drawn by the desire to resuscitate a small rural school with what he calls “a delightfully quirky name”: Happy By Nature School. 

We couldn’t have picked a more apt spot for this conversation than the school itself; our vantage point offers a bird’s-eye view of the hamlets and the raging Bhagirathi River below. Having lived and studied in Uttarakhand through much of his student life, this moment is almost full-circle for Rohit. 

He shares, “I came to Rashtriya Indian Military College, Dehradun as a 12-year-old. Studying at a military school, I was taught discipline, not just outwardly but also in an internalised form. Today, at the Happy By Nature School, it’s a value we inculcate in our students.”

He adds, “If there’s clutter inside the mind, that clutter reflects in all areas of one’s life. And so, we’re trying to raise a generation of children who can think clearly, speak clearly, act clearly and hopefully, one day change the world for the better.” 

While we’re having our chat against the backdrop of one of Uttarakhand’s hot summer afternoons, Rohit tells me the landscape is rarely this warm. Children often have to brave heavy rain and biting cold, walking or travelling on kutcha (mud) tracks to reach school from their villages, most of which are several kilometres away. 

‘Why do you still show up every day?’

I pose this question to Angana Uniyal (14), who’s been coming to the school since nursery. There’s never a reason not to, she smiles, cheekily recounting the “only time she did not want to come to school”, when her favourite teacher left to move to another village. 

While I can’t help smiling at her response, I can’t deny how brave these children are to attend school every day despite the tough terrain and extreme weather.  

The roads are winding and steep. Knotted veins in the form of serrated ridges protrude from the weathered hands and feet of the mountains. But, as Angana’s stories indicate, numerous reasons to skip school — infrastructure, treacherous roads, distance, the cold, the heavy rains  — pale in comparison to all the reasons they have to keep attending. 

In May (when I conducted these interviews), there was another reason on that list: Summer School, organised and managed by volunteers from across India, who’d come to share their knowledge and skills with the children during the summer vacation.  

“We came here expecting to teach them, but are going back with so many lessons ourselves,” says one of the volunteers, Akankshya Patnaik, a psychology graduate from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Underscoring Angana’s example, she reasons, “They attend school even on days it’s difficult to because they have immense gratitude for what they have.” 

A school that children keep coming back to 

Angana is one of the 180 children who study at the Happy By Nature School. The number itself is a feat, according to various articles and........

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