In 1993 the Rinchen Zangpo Society for Spiti Development, new and unknown, had neither the backing nor the resources to build its own school in such a remote and poor a place as Spiti, so the first seventeen children in the care of the society were taken to be educated in a private school outside Spiti Valley in Yol, chosen for its close proximity to His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s residence in exile in Dharamsala. It is in the same state as Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, two day’s bus journey away in summer, three in winter. The cramped school basement was rented as accommodation for these children.

 The following year we began to manage our own hostel, in a building that we were eventually able to purchase. Over the years we extended the hostel so that more than seventy children of all school ages lived happily together there. A lack of space and direct road access hampered our further expansion plans. Eventually we found land in the neighbouring settlement of Sidhwari. Our purpose built girls’ hostel opened there in 2004.

                                                       Building Crew                                                                     Students at Sidhwari Hostel

 Further expansion will now take place at Rakkar Road, Sidhwari. Due to the expense of maintaining two parallel establishments outside Spiti it made sense to shift our operation wholly to our new, more open site and we sold the old Yol hostel at the beginning of 2007. There are now eighty-five students at the Sidhwari site, all housed in new purpose-built hostel accommodation. An assembly/study hall will soon be finished and a block containing space for the main office, guest accommodation and classrooms for after hours tuition should be finished later in 2007.

 Though in the meantime we have been able to fulfill our original dream of establishing our own school in Spiti itself, which is now flourishing up to 10^th class (age 16), our Sidhwari base remains an important part of our future plans. It will be a challenge for some years to come to provide all the facilities required for a senior secondary school (age 16-18) in Spiti, given the long lines of communication, the rugged terrain and the severe winter. Especially difficult is recruiting better qualified teachers of the more competitive science subjects for such a location.

  Students at Sidhwari Hostel                                                           Students at Sidhwari Hostel

 At the moment all students in our charge carrying on to senior secondary level and beyond come down from the hills to Sidhwari or they go to the big city of Chandigarh where they attend government or private schools, or coaching institutes in the locality. Fees in the best schools are high. Having garnered experience of what these schools are offering we now feel that our money would be best spent on our own small school which will be open to boys and girls from the Himalayan and Tibetan areas that share a common culture with us. This way we can still promote our values and minority language while offering a first class modern education especially for those specialising in science at senior secondary level. We plan eventually to expand our facilities at Munsel-ling School in Spiti to cater for those taking arts subjects at senior secondary level. In future the only students going to Chandigarh should be those doing post matriculation cramming for medical college entrance examinations and the like.

 Our Sidhwari location is attractive, tree shaded and in a semi rural area. There are grand views of the misty Dhauladhar, the first great upthrust of the immense Himalayan collision between India and the rest of Asia. It enjoys a refreshing climate, escaping the extreme heat of the plains and the extreme cold of Spiti. Living in the Dharamsala area gives our students a great opportunity to strengthen their own cultural roots by mixing with the large Tibetan exile community settled there and with visitors and pilgrims from all over the Buddhist Himalaya.

Students at Sidhwari Hostel