This story is part of “Parenting: What Google Won’t Tell You” — The Better India’s people-led parenting series that goes beyond conventional advice to document how real families are actually raising their children. Through real parents, parenting coaches, influencers and experts, the series brings honest, diverse and relatable perspectives on the questions, choices, challenges and solutions that shape everyday parenting — the things Google can’t always answer.

The aroma of simmering broth drifts through the mountain air as laughter rises from a rooftop kitchen in a small Himachal village. Around the table, travellers from different parts of the world chop vegetables and trade stories while three children move easily among them, helping with dinner, listening, asking questions and joining the conversation.

For Mayur and Joy Sontakke, moments like these are part of how their children learn.

The Indian-Vietnamese couple have built much of their family life around NomadGao, the coliving and coworking community they created for digital nomads. Here, their 13-year-old twin boys and eight-year-old daughter learn through shared meals, conversations with travellers, baking experiments, board games, carpentry projects and long afternoons outdoors.

The couple, who also run The Hotpot House in Dharamkot, chose during the pandemic to step away from conventional schooling and adopt a more flexible, child-led approach to education.

Their idea of learning now stretches across kitchens, farms, workshops, books, conversations and everyday life, shaped by curiosity rather than a fixed curriculum.

Building a life around community

Long before NomadGao existed, Mayur was questioning conventional ideas about education and success.

Growing up in Kolhapur in a traditional middle-class family, he followed the expected path until he found himself increasingly disconnected from what he was being taught. “I was disillusioned about why I was learning what I was learning,” he recalls. Failing Class 12, which many considered a life-defining setback, became a turning point instead.

“That was the best thing,” he says. “Everyone lost their expectations from me. I felt free to do whatever I wanted.”

The years that followed were filled with unconventional experiences: door-to-door marketing in villages, part-time jobs, remote work, and eventually travelling across India and Southeast Asia as one of the country’s early digital nomads. Those experiences reinforced a belief that some of life’s most important lessons happen outside classrooms.

Joy’s journey was equally transformative. Raised in Vietnam, she followed a conventional route through school, university, and a banking career before meeting Mayur in 2017. After moving to India, she found herself exploring entirely new paths — from nutrition and health coaching to toy design and eventually running a restaurant.

“I’m a self-learner,” she says. “Everything I learned in school or university didn’t always matter in what I chose to do........

© The Better India