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.
The students and teachers are guided by a curriculum that focuses on holistic development.
‘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.”
Jiya teaching the children to play the keyboard (L); Kunal teaching the children the basics of technology and electronics (R.
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 reports that survey the academic situation in Uttarakhand.
In 2025, The Indian Express told the story of a girl who was the only student at the Government Primary School in Bhatoli, a village in Uttarakhand’s Tehri district. The article went on to explore how hilly terrain and migration patterns have contributed to the sparse student population. That same year, according to figures quoted in Parliament, 7,073 schools had enrolments below 20, while 1,740 had just one teacher.
This seems to be a common problem, but not at the Happy By Nature School. A different story of hope plays out here.
The children were encouraged to hone their skills and creatively tell the story of their village.
The school’s curriculum follows the NCERT pattern and has classes from nursery to Class 8. Students who move to another school for Class 9 often miss the way they learnt here. One of them, Anushka Nautiyal (15), keeps visiting her alma mater.
She shares, “I keep telling my friends in my new school that the way they used to teach here was so cool. We didn’t learn science just in theory. We did cool experiments to understand. They also taught us to make our own notes so that we could learn concepts.”
Now, to cater to students from classes 9 to 12, a higher secondary school is under construction in Singuni village. It will have a capacity of 520 students. Funded with non-profit money being raised across India and the world and spread over 20,000 square feet, the new school will have modern facilities and infrastructure.
The new school under construction at Singuni village.
Science experiments, pahadi songs and a different way to learn
The goal of the innovative teaching methodologies at the Happy By Nature School is to encourage children to use their imagination think beyond the scope of the textbook. The idea is to place the children on the same playing field as their counterparts in urban areas.
One of the volunteers, Mannat Kaur Atwal, a young teacher from Mumbai specialising in Early Childhood Education, shares that she was fascinated by the children’s knowledge of advanced topics. “When Kunal (one of the volunteers) was teaching them the concepts of connecting and controlling an LED with an Arduino, they knew how the electric network works! That was so impressive.”
Alongside their cognitive skills, the children also have talents waiting to be nurtured. Jiya Goswami, one of the volunteers and a Gandharva-trained musician from Vadodara, was stunned by how well they played pahadi songs on the keyboard. “While they have musical instruments at the school, if they had someone who routinely came and taught them to play these, the children would really benefit and be able to make the most of their skills,” she shares.
“These are the areas that the focus is now on, and we are working very hard to get there,” says Rohit.
In time, he wants to see the school evolve into one that truly caters to children’s all-round development. And he credits his fellow trustees Ramesh Ramola and Vinay Kumar Singh for being instrumental in championing a high benchmark for excellence at the school.
The team of volunteers who organised and conducted the Summer School.
The man who led the school to success
“We’re not just focused on creating good students but also good citizens of the country,” Rohit, a retired Army officer, shares.
“Through the school, we’re trying to create a centre of excellence which becomes a model for others to replicate. We’re trying to show that you can educate children in a remote place; build a sustainable campus and also attract good teachers who want to make a difference at the grassroots level. One day, I hope people from all over the country want to come and put their children in schools like these,” he smiles.
Moving from a career in the Indian Army (1990-2004), to a corporate career (2004-2021), and then to education, wasn’t something he had charted out. He credits fate for the detours.
“In 2019, I was on a vacation in Varanasi. One evening, while on a boat ride with an elderly couple, the gentleman told me about a “school up in the Himalayas” which I should visit (the Happy By Nature School),” Rohit recalls. He didn’t go immediately but paid a visit eventually. The condition of the school was “heartbreaking”.
“Everything was in a state of neglect. There were about 30 children, barely any furniture, no proper place for the children to sit, very few teachers, and hardly any books. The students were reusing the same textbooks and notebooks over and over again. It felt like a school that was barely functioning and almost on the verge of closing down,” he shares.
But despite the state of the school, he says, there was one bright spot: the children. “They were energetic, curious, excited to learn, eager to talk, and full of questions. I felt there was no reason they didn’t deserve the same quality of education, guidance, and opportunities as our own children,” he reasons.
The memory of that visit stayed with him. It was only in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he “had time to reflect on life”, that memory resurfaced. “It struck me how the lack of an opportunity would mean they wouldn’t get to live their dreams and a lifetime would just go by,” he shares.
And so, Rohit stepped away from a flourishing corporate career and decided to helm affairs at the school. Built around alternative learning, the school focuses on the holistic development of the child.
While academics are central, topics such as afforestation, teamwork, and village development are also prioritised. One of the volunteers, Neeraj, who has a background in farming, introduced the students to the concept of food forests, helped them appreciate the diversity of flora and fauna and took them on nature walks where they could see their forests through a new lens.
The students learnt a bunch of different skills during the Summer School. It gave them an opportunity to expand their learning beyond the textbooks.
A child’s world doesn’t stop at the school gate
But no matter the subject, the goal of the curriculum, Rohit says, is to ensure that learning does not happen in silos. “We also counsel parents to reinforce the values and approach we follow in school. Otherwise, the child receives conflicting messages. We do the counselling through structured parent-teacher meetings (PTMs), chai pe charcha sessions, and have parent associations where we discuss shared concerns. These conversations cover everything from a child’s progress to community initiatives like cleanliness and sanitation around the school.”
In cases of children facing issues such as alcoholism or abuse in the family, separate counselling sessions are held. “We have to approach these situations with sensitivity. Many of our children are first-generation learners, and parents are deeply invested in their future. They are eager to engage, seek guidance, and work together to create a better environment for their children,” Rohit explains.
And this mindset filters down to the students.
As Angana shares, her dream is to become an IAS officer and serve the nation. She drawss inspiration from her “favourite Rohit sir”. “I feel that if I don’t do something meaningful for my country, I would have wasted my time,” Angana reasons.
As part of the Summer School, the students were engaged in various art and craft activities.
Ask her what she wishes she could change in the village, and she says it’s the caste system. “There is still a lot of discrimination. If someone from a lower caste visits our home, they aren’t welcomed. My grandmother tells me not to eat at my friends’ homes, the ones who are not of my caste. But at school, we don’t follow these things. Everyone is the same. And that’s what I love about it,” she adds.
Angana and the other students thoroughly enjoyed the activity organised by one of the volunteers, Pragati Bhatia, a teacher from Jaipur, who got each child to wear a mask featuring the face of a different animal. She then encouraged them to talk about their unique skills. Through this, Pragati wanted to convey the message that the supremacy of an animal (or a human) was something constructed by society. No one is “more” or “less” than another.
Pragati teaching the children the concept of equality and how distinction is a man-made phenomenon.
Rohit seconds this.
“Often our education system conditions us to define success in a very narrow way: getting a good job in a big city, earning a high salary, and working in a corporate office. At the primary or middle school level, it’s difficult for us to challenge that narrative entirely. What we do tell our students is this: work hard, learn well, and equip yourself with the skills and knowledge needed to build a secure future and earn a livelihood. Once you’ve found your footing in life, and even while you’re building your career, remember to give something back to society and to the country. We try to exemplify that through our own lives.”
Today, the Happy By Nature School has found a place in the region’s collective memory, as an island of joy, where India’s next generation of bright minds are being taught.
Images courtesy volunteers (mentioned in the story) at Happy By Nature School
